Macaronic language

Macaronic refers to text spoken or written using a mixture of languages, sometimes including bilingual puns, particularly when the languages are used in the same context (as opposed to different segments of a text being in different languages). The term is also sometimes used to denote hybrid words, which are in effect internally macaronic. A rough equivalent in spoken language is code-switching, a term in linguistics referring to using more than one language or dialect in conversation.

Macaronic Latin specifically is a jumbled jargon made up of vernacular words given Latin endings, or for Latin words mixed with the vernacular in a pastiche (compare dog Latin).

The word macaronic comes from the New Latin macaronicus, from Italian dialect maccarone ("dumpling, macaroni", regarded as coarse peasant fare). The term macaronic has derogatory overtones, and it is usually reserved for works where the mixing of languages has a humorous or satirical intent. It is a matter of debate whether the term can be applied to mixed-language literature of a more serious nature and purpose.

History

Mixed Latin-vernacular lyrics in Medieval Europe

Texts that mixed Latin and vernacular language apparently arose throughout Europe at the end of the Middle Ages—a time when Latin was still the working language of scholars, clerics or university students, but was losing ground to vernacular among poets, minstrels and storytellers.

An early example occurs in 1130, in the Gospel book of Munsterbilzen Abbey. The following sentence is found, mixing late Old Dutch and Latin:

Tesi samanunga was edele unde scona
et omnium virtutum pleniter plena

Translated: This community was noble and pure, and completely full of all virtues.

The Carmina Burana (collected ca. 1230) contains several poems mixing Latin with Medieval German or French. Another well-known example is the first stanza of the famous carol In Dulci Jubilo, whose original version (written around 1328) had Latin mixed with German, with a hint of Greek. While some of those early works had a clear humorous intent, many used the language mix for lyrical effect.

Another early example in the Middle English recitals The Towneley Plays (ca. 1460). In play 24 (The Talents), Pontius Pilate delivers a speech in mixed English-Latin rhyme.

A number of English political poems in the 14th century alternated (Middle) English and Latin lines, as for example in MS Digby 196:

The taxe hath tened [ruined] vs alle,
      Probat hoc mors tot validorum
  The Kyng þerof had small
      ffuit in manibus cupidorum.
  yt had ful hard hansell,
      dans causam fine dolorum;
  vengeaunce nedes most fall,
      propter peccata malorum
  (etc)

Latin-Italian macaronic verse

The term "macaronic" is believed to originate from Padua in the late 14th century, apparently from maccarona, a kind of pasta or dumpling eaten by peasants at that time. (That word is also the presumed origin of the Italian word maccheroni.) Its association with the genre comes from the Macaronea, a comical poem by Tifi Odasi in mixed Latin and Italian, published in 1488 or 1489. Another example of the genre is Tosontea by Corrado of Padua, which was published at about the same time as Tifi's Macaronea.

Tifi and his contemporaries clearly intended to satirize the broken Latin used by many doctors, scholars and bureaucrats of their time. While this "macaronic Latin" (macaronica verba) could be due to ignorance or carelessness, it could also be the result of its speakers trying to make themselves understood by common folk without resorting to their "vulgar" language.

An important and unusual example of mixed-language text is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna (1499), which was basically written using Italian syntax and morphology, but using a made-up vocabulary based on roots from Latin, Greek, and occasionally others. However, while the Hypnerotomachia is contemporary with Tifi's Macaronea, its mixed language is not used for plain humor, but is rather as an aesthetic device to underscore the fantastic but refined nature of the book.

Tifi's Macaronea was a popular success, and the writing of humorous texts in Macaronic Latin became a fad in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in Italian. An important example was Baldo by Teofilo Folengo, who described his own verses as "a gross, rude, and rustic mixture of flour, cheese, and butter".

Other mixed-language lyrics

Macaronic verse is especially common in cultures with widespread bilingualism or language contact, such as Ireland before the middle of the nineteenth century. Macaronic traditional songs, such as Siúil A Rúin are quite common in Ireland. In Scotland, macaronic songs became popular for a period among Highland immigrants to Glasgow, using English and Scottish Gaelic as a device to express the alien nature of the anglophone environment. An example:

When I came down to Glasgow first,

a-mach air Tìr nan Gall.
I was like a man adrift,

air iomrall 's doll air chall.

The term "macaronic" itself was popular as it bears a superficial resemblance to a common Gaelic surname form: Mac a' ... meaning son of the ....

Folk and popular music of the Andes frequently alternates between Spanish and the given South American language of its region of origin.

Macaronic verse was also common in medieval India, where the influence of the Muslim rulers led to poems being written alternatingly in indigenous medieval Hindi verse, followed by one in the Persian language. This style was used by the famous poet Amir Khusro, and it also played a major role in the rise of the Urdu or Hindustani language.

Unintentional macaronic language

Main article: Homophonic translation

Occasionally language is unintentionally macaronic. A Greek-French example, well-known among French schoolchildren, is attributed to Xénophon by Alfred de Vigny in Pluton ciel que Janus Proserpine:

Ouk élabon polin, alla gar elpis éphè kaka.

This means

They did not take the city, as they hadn't a hope [of taking it].

but if read in French sounds like:

Où qu'est la bonne Pauline? A la gare. Elle pisse et fait caca.

meaning

Where is the maid Pauline? At the station. She's pissing and pooing.

Another example, although in this case the origin is accidental, lies in Norwegian inter-language jokes to English where some words are replaced with false friends so that what is said still sounds like correct English but means something else for some one who know Norwegian. For instance, the sentence "It is not the speed that kills, but the impact". In Norwegian the word for speed is "fart" and impact is "smell". Rally driver Petter Solberg is attributed with several accidental quotes of Macaronic language, such as "It is not the fart that kills, but the smell", "I had bad pigs in my dekk" (referring to studded tires) and "I came with a great fart and disappeared as a prikk in the sky".

The Swedish film Off side where an English football player comes to Sweden to play local football uses a lot of jokes of this sort, showing the Swedes lack of knowledge for some everyday objects. For example, the English word "cup" sounds to a Swede a lot like "kopp" (which means cup) but sounds to an Englishman exactly like "cop"; when a character says that the better take out the "cops" the Englishman becomes confused. Another example is when the Swedes try to translate the Swedish word "skata" (a kind of bird) and calls them "skates". So they tell the Englishman to watch out for all the skates pooing everywere.

Modern macaronic literature

Prose

Macaronic text is still used by modern Italian authors, e.g. by Carlo Emilio Gadda. Other examples are provided by the character Salvatore in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and the peasant hero of his Baudolino. Dario Fo' s Mistero Buffo ("Comic Mystery Play") features grammelot sketches using language with macaronic elements.

The novel The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt includes portions of Japanese, Classical Greek and Inuktitut, although the reader is not expected to understand the passages that are not in English.

Macaronic language is one of many language games used by the literary group Oulipo, in the form of interlinguistic homophonic transformation: replacing a known phrase by a homophonic equivalent in another language, the archetypal example of which is by François Le Lionnais, transforming John Keats' "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" into "Un singe de beauté est un jouet pour l'hiver" 'A monkey of beauty is a toy for the winter'.

Macaronisms figure prominently in the The Trilogy by the Polish novelist, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and are one of the major compositional principles for James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake.

Poetry

Two well-known examples of modern non-humorous macaronic verse are Byron's Maid of Athens, ere we part (1810, in English with a Greek refrain); and Pearsall's translation of the In Dulci Jubilo carol (1837, in mixed English-Latin verse).

An example of modern humorous macaronic verse is the anonymous English-Latin poem Carmen Possum ("The Opossum's Song"), which is sometimes used as a teaching and motivational aid in elementary Latin language classes. Other similar examples are The Motor Bus by A. D. Godley, and the anonymous Up I arose in verno tempore.

Recent examples are the mużajki or mosaics (2007) of Maltese poet Antoine Cassar (that mix English, Spanish, Maltese, Italian and French), the linguistic blendings of the Italian writer Guido Monte, or the late poetry of Ivan Blatný that combines Czech with English.

A whole body of comic verse exists created by John O'Mill, pseudonym of Johan van der Meulen, a teacher of English at the Rijks HBS (State Grammar School), Breda, the Netherlands. These are written in a mixture of English and Dutch, often playing on common mistakes made when translating from the latter to the former.

Film

Macaronisms are frequently used in films, especially comedies. In Charlie Chaplin's anti-Nazi comedy The Great Dictator, the title character, who is a parody of Adolf Hitler, speaks a macaronic parody of the German language in his speeches. He uses German words like "Juden (Jew)" and "Sauerkraut" and English words that use macaronic German grammar, such as "Cheese-und-cracken". This was also used by the parody character of Benito Mussolini using famous Italian foods as insults, such as salami and ravioli.

Other movies featuring use of Macaronic language are the Italian historical comedies L'armata Brancaleone and Brancaleone alle crociate, by Mario Monicelli, in which the characters speak a mix of modern and medieval Italian, as well as Latin (sometimes in rhyme, and sometimes with regional connotations, such as the Italo-Normans using words from modern Sicilian dialect).

See also

• Dog Latin, e.g. Mater si, magistra no
• Code-switching
• Phono-semantic matching
• Contemporary Latin
• Hiberno-Latin
• UEFA Champions League Anthem
• Amir Khusro
• Guido Monte
• Denglisch
• Dunglish
• Franglais, a mixture of French and English often used for humorous effect
• Spanglish, a mixture of Spanish and English
• Swenglish, a mixture of Swedish and English
• Portuñol or Portunhol, a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish
• The Boar's Head Carol. Traditional 15th century university Christmas carol with English and Latin text.
• Nadsat, a form of Russian-influenced English used by teenagers in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange.
• Faux Cyrillic
• Pidgin

References

• Posen, I. Sheldon English-French Macaronic Songs in Canada- A Research Note and Query in Folksongs [3]