Jeg er ved at læse Daniel C. Dennets selvbiografi I’ve Been Thinking. Dennett, som døde for nylig, var en amerikansk tænker, der har skrevet mange fascinerende bøger om “the philosophy of mind” – bevidsthed, fri vilje og lignende dybe emner. Han fortjener et længere blogindlæg ved lejlighed, men her vil jeg bare slå ned på en lille sproglig finurlighed fra den anekdoterige bog. I et kapitel on sin tid på University of California, Irvine, skriver Dennett følgende:
Another great logician visitor from UCLA was Alonzo Church, famous for Church’s Thesis and Church’s Theorem, two of the foundational ideas of computer science. Church gave several talks at UCI, meticulously filling the blackboards with formulae. He insisted that you should never say what some term or sentence meant without subscripting the language thus: “snowEnglish” refers to snow, because the same ortographic symbol might possibly mean different things in different languages – “chairFrench” means “flesh”; “GiftGerman” means “poison”. I decided to call this Church’s Possibility and issued a challenge to one and all to come up with a sentence that was grammatical in two different languages and had two very different meanings, with high points for length and naturalness. Donald Davidson had an oral candidate: “Empedocles leaped” and “Empedocles liebt” (“loves” in German). The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles is fabled to have committed suicide by leaping into Mount Etna. My sailing shipmate Don Heiney came up with “Grand legs? Seize ours!” (French for “Large legacy? Sixteen bears!”). I wrote a letter to Vladimir Nabokov, my favorite novelist, polyglot and wordsmith; his wife, Very, wrote me a nice reply saying that she asked him and he said he hadn’t ever considered the exercise and was sorry to say he had no examples. The challenge remains. I have wasted many hours trying to improve on Don Heiney’s terse example without success, and I will gratefully consider any examples longer and better than his and duly announce prizes for any good candidates.”
Efter at have læst det tænkte jeg straks, at det da for pokker ikke kunne være så svært at finde længere eksempler! I går aftes, da jeg ikke kunne sove, begyndte min hjerne at tumle med udfordringen. “Fast and faster” meldte sig hurtigt – på dansk kan det være en kompliment til et familiemedlems glimrende indkøb til julemiddagen: “Fast and, faster!”. Ret hurtigt fandt jeg på en udvidelse til syv ord: på dansk et kryptisk spørgsmål om samme familiemedlems sært kølige fremtoning:
Sad dog is fast i dig, faster?
og på engelsk en konkurrence med en trist vovse om hvem der kan grave hurtigst:
Sad dog is fast, I dig faster!
Det fremgår ikke helt hvor meget vægt Dennett lægger på, at tegnsætningen også skal være den samme på begge sprog. Skal den det, bliver det naturligvis sværere. Skriver man med lutter store bogstaver, slipper man for skønhedspletten at “I” er med stort på engelsk, men ikke på dansk. Tegnsætningen bliver straks værre at homogenisere. Måske “SAD DOG IS FAST, I DIG, FASTER?” er det bedste kompromis.
Anyway – udfordringen er hermed givet videre, og jeg kommer sikkert også selv til at lede efter bedre eksempler.