There is the stanza in Utopian script and language in the beginning of More's Utopia, 1516 and 1518 editions (see attached pictures):

 Vtopos ha Boccas peu la chama polta chamaan

Bargol he maglomi baccan soma gymnosophaon

Agrama gymnosophon labarem bacha bodamilomin

Voluala barchin heman la lauoluola dramme pagloni

Latin translation :

Vtopus me dux ex non insula fecit insulam

Vna ego terrarum omnium absque philosophia

Ciuitatem philosophicam expressi mortalibus

Libenter impartio mea, non grauatim accipio meliora

English translation :

“Utopus, my ruler, converted me, formerly not an island, into an island. Alone of all lands, without the aid of abstract philosophy, I have represented for mortals the philosophical city. Ungrudgingly do I share my benefits with others; undemurringly do I adopt whatever is better from others.

For those who are interested in this anecdotic matter I have written in French an essay on this sample of Utopian language, showing that elements of Indian languages could have been used for composing it. The reference is :

 “La langue de l’île d’Utopie : les Indes orientales vues des Flandres à la Renaissance”, Acta Orientalia Belgica 26, 2013, pp. 203-222. A preliminary (2009) e-version of these researches, including images, is still available at:

Here is a relevant extract of the 2013 article (without the footnotes):

Même si cela servirait notre démonstration, pour ce qui concerne du moins l’écriture elle-même on ne suivra donc pas John Duncan M. Derrett  quand il soutient que les lettres g à l ont « a distinctly South Asian appearance », ou que les modifications du cercle de a à f rappellent l’écriture malayāḷam (du Kérala) « in their general appearance ».

   Pour ce qui est de l’analyse de la langue utopienne du quatrain, en mettant de côté l’interprétation de celui-ci par les cryptogrammes qu’a proposée Léon Herrmann (ici hors de propos, quelle que soit sa possible validité), on reviendra sur les résultats de trois analyses détaillées qui lui ont été consacrées. Pour ce faire, il convient de placer en juxtalinéaire les textes latin et utopien ; car manifestement, dans le processus créatif, le premier a précédé le second, qui l’épouse mot à mot.

Vtopus        me       dux                 ex non  insula             fecit                  insulam

Vtopos        ha        Boccas             peu la chama             polta                chamaan

Vna             ego      terrarum         omnium           absque             philosophia

Bargol        he        maglomi          baccan             soma               gymnosophaon

Ciuitatem                philosophicam            expressi                      mortalibus

Agrama                  gymnosophon              labarem bacha            bodamilomin

Libenter      impartio          mea,                non grauatim             accipio             meliora

Voluala       barchin            heman            la lauoluola                 dramme           pagloni

    Des mots sont très clairement d’origine grecque : Vtopos, et la paire gymnosophaon (philosophia) / gymnosophon (philosophicam). Voluala (libenter) a une affinité avec le latin (uolo). La négation la dans peu la (ex non), redoublée dans la la-uoluola (non illibenter = non grauatim), est sémitique (hébreu lo’, araméen lā’, arabe lâ). Un système de déclinaisons est attesté par les alternances chama (abl. insula) / chamaan (acc. insulam), et ha (acc. me) / he (nom. ego) / heman (adj. dérivé), qui ressemble au pronom personnel grec de la première personne. Les autres rapprochements lexicaux avec le grec sont beaucoup plus hypothétiques, de même que ceux faits avec le français et le portugais (Bleiler), l’anglais ou le persan (Pons). Pour cette dernière langue, Thomas More écrit pourtant lui-même à propos des Utopiens :

Suspicor enim eam gentem a graecis originem duxisse : propterea quod sermo illorum caetera fere Persicus, non nulla graeci sermonis uestigia seruet in urbium ac magistratuum uocabulis. (p. 180 éd. crit. E. Surtz & J. H. Hexter)

   C’est la piste indienne, autorisée par la référence du texte aux gymnosophistes, qui m’amène pour ma part à oser quelques rapprochements avec le sanskrit, et à ainsi noter l’importance de la vocalisation en a ; à voir dans la finale -ta de pol-ta la désinence secondaire moyenne de la troisième du singulier ; dans agrama un « non-village » (a-grāma) qui pourrait servir à désigner une « cité », un « centre urbain » (cf. Malayalam Lexicon s.v. a-grāmya : « not rustic, refined, urban ») ; dans labarem bacha quelque chose d’un (boiteux) labhāmi (prés.) ou abharam (impft.) vācam « je prends » ou « j’ai porté parole » ; dans la finale -min de bodamilomin la désinence du locatif singulier pronominal de tasmin (renforcé par infixation du locatif malayāḷam en -il ?) ; dans la finale -e de dramme la désinence primaire moyenne de la première personne du singulier; dans la finale -oni de pagloni la désinence -āni du nom.-acc. nt. pluriel thématique ; et selon le même b pour v de bacha pour vācam, dans le mot bargol et la forme verbale barchin la même racine VṚJ- « réserver pour soi », dont le dérivé adjectif varja- ifc. signifie « exempt », « privé de », « excepté ».


Christophe Vielle

Le 11 févr. 2014 à 22:13, Richard Salomon a écrit :

Just for fun, it might be amusing to study and compare such examples of bogus (?) languages in various literatures. For India, an interesting example is the speech of an Indian shipwrecked sailor in a Greek play found among the Oxyrhynchus papyri. Hultzsch (Hermes 39, 1904, pp. 307-311 and JRAS 1904, pp. 309-345) tried to identify it as proto-Kannada, but L.D. Barnett (Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 12, 1926, pp. 13-15) doubted this, and thought that "it might be mere gibberish."

In English, Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well' contains a scene (act IV, scene 1) in which the character speak a mysterious language in order to trick the villain Parolles into a confession. The language sounds suspiciously like Italian and/or Latin:
First Soldier
   Boskos vauvado: I understand thee, and can speak
   thy tongue. Kerely bonto, sir, betake thee to thy
   faith, for seventeen poniards are at thy bosom.
PAROLLES
   O!
First Soldier
   O, pray, pray, pray! Manka revania dulche
Second Lord
   Oscorbidulchos volivorco.

But here the language is intentionally fake, so it is a different case from the one under discussion. There must be many more examples of both types, if anyone wants to waste some time...

Richard Salomon



On 2/11/2014 2:59 AM, C.A. Formigatti wrote:
Dear Dr Bowles,

At least a part of the last quote is in Italian, but written with a
funny English orthography:

‘_Sat tu sicurah da non lasharay andarah, guescha bect-cha, liberal dubo
toto suferanza.

Sei tu sicura di non lasciare andare questa vecchia, liberala da tutta
[la] sofferenza

The translation 'Death to you; death by terrible torture' etc. doesn't
correspond to the Italian, which means 'Are you sure you want to release
this old woman, free her from [the] suffering' or something in this
direction (the last part is a little bit strange).

I hope I've been able to help you!

Camillo Formigatti


On 2014-02-11 10:15, indology-request@list.indology.info wrote:
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Today's Topics:

  1. language identification (Adam Bowles)
  2. Whish Collection! (Dr. Debabrata Chakrabarti)
  3. Re: language identification (Valerie J Roebuck)
  4. Wendy Doniger's book to be withdrawn in India by Penguin
     India (Dominik Wujastyk)


Dear Colleagues,

A colleague who is not a member of this list has requested assistance
with the following query:

I'm editing for a fairly soon publication a play (William Archer's
_The Green Goddess_) which has simple short bits of dialogue in a
foreign language, unidentified. The play is a melodrama set in a
remote place in the north-western Himalayas, north of and so outside
of the then British-ruled areas (the play's writing date is 1920). I
have the TS prompt book used by JCW for their Australian production
in 1924, but of course though that gives bits of dialogue in this
language, and provide translations into English, the script doesn't
identify what language they are using. It is not Hindustani, that is
made clear, though that is also used here and there.

Here are a few samples from the TS along with the translations:

‘_Unkeitha hu_!’ (They are alive!); ‘_Hub sa jumphti odt, hu
keitha_!’ (Two of them are alive, at least); ‘_Un nukkha jan
ru_!’ (They are not killed); ‘_Guth, baith un pai hai dosha!_’
(Back, they may have the Evil Eye).

The Priest’s explanation is given: ‘_Kha hai Adythum_’ (This
is her temple). ‘_Au ka jahah kaman sa gulbia_’ (She beckoned
your ship out of the sky). ‘_Kha main tha hunthal Maharaj ka_’
(The land is ruled by our Raja). ‘_Go hai nuxman_’ (That is the
palace there). ‘_Ha khaja un ka hasthi_’ (I have sent for him).
‘_Kumajo heinga dha_’ (He will be here soon).

Traherne is introduced ‘blindfold’ and the High (Chief) Priest
curses Traherne: ‘_Sat tu sicurah da non lasharay andarah, guescha
bect-cha, liberal dubo toto suferanza. Kay sat ychi; kay sat
ychi_’ (Death to you; death by terrible torture. You pollute our
sacred temple. The Great Roc found you. It brought you here. Death,
suffering, the curse of the Green Goddess be on you).

I rather suspect the 'liberal dubo toto suferanza' phrase: it sounds
like a kind of esperanto pidgin slipped in for audience
comprehension. But I believe the rest to be a genuine local
language. Pahari?

any help in this would be most appreciated and of course
acknowledged in its site of publication: the Manchester UP journal
_Nineteenth Century Film and Theatre._

If anyone has any insight to offer, please email Professor Veronica
Kelly at v.kelly@uq.edu.au. Any assistance would be greatly
appreciated.

Best
Adam Bowles

The University of Queensland


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--
----------------------

Richard Salomon
Department of Asian Languages and Literature
University of Washington, Box 353521
Seattle WA 98195-3521
USA


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