...no, don't worry, speakers of Hymmnos, the subject line bears no relation to my mood. Rather, I'm expressing my delight at discovering today that hearing these lines now makes me shiver instinctively, because as soon as I hear them I am keenly aware of what they mean. ("Are you feeling hatred?" "(In my fierce concentration that I hope to end,) I'm feeling hatred.") They're not just pretty syllables for me any more; I react to them as I would react to any word or phrase I knew, without having to think about it. I still don't know much Hymmnos, at all, but still, that little reaction made me happy.
And it's such an elegantly compact language, too; the fact that I can hear "was ki ga" and get out of it an emotion, the intensity of that emotion, and the singer's meta-feelings about having that emotion demonstrates just how much you really can convey in three words with the right grammar. Any attempt to express those concepts in English, or most other languages I know, is always going to come out sounding clunkier than "was ki ga". You hear that, and you know what it means, and you don't need any more; it's sweet simplicity, poetic, almost haiku-esque.
Incidentally, I found a different translation of the opening to EXEC_SPHILIA/. from the one I'm used to reading, here, and I have to say I think I understand the song a bit better having read it in this version:
Wee paks ga faf yora accrroad mea?
[What do you give me?]
Was yea ra pauwel en wael yor.
[I give you the power to be happy]
Wee paks ga chs mea?
[What will I become?]
Echrra en chs ar dor.
[Unity, and reconciliation with the world]
(Lit: Resonance to become one world)
Was paks ga chs na mea,
[I will become not me]
en paul yor yora harton mea
[To feel your love for me]...
That last bit I think is particularly profound: I will become not me, to feel your love for me. Given that from what I've heard this song is likely a dialogue between Jakuri's different sides, she's talking, most likely, about separating herself into aspects of herself in her Cosmosphere so that she can give herself love and reassurance as if someone else were giving it to her. That's really quite poignant, when you think about it; she's like a child hugging herself, almost, in this part of the song.
Also, that "What will I become?/Unity, and reconciliation with the world" part really gets to me, in a good way. It's what I've always hoped the eventual outcome of her story will be: not just even that she'll bring that about, but that she'll become that, a raw force focused on making it happen, blazing energy and light for change. Me like.
That said, there are some shaky parts to the translation ("desfel" translated as "being shy" seems to be the biggest error; I don't immediately spot any others, but again, I'm no Hymmnos scholar), so I'm not sure how authentic it is on the whole, but still... I like the new meanings that may have been revealed here.
Letra - Eldharia ~Inori Saku Mori~
3 months ago
14 comments:
That last bit I think is particularly profound: I will become not me, to feel your love for me.
I've seen this translation before, and my original interpretation was that at this point, Jakuri already identifies with her hatred. At the same time, she realizes that she needs to let go of that part of herself before she can even be open to her own love, but she is almost reluctant to do so, perhaps out of wariness.
Yours makes sense too, and no poignancy is lost either way.
I'm so torn about the idea of speaking in Hymmnos. I like the idea of being able to express how I feel, but I'm not so sure about being required to. Suppose I didn't want someone to know how I felt-- it would force me either to lie or to switch to a language other than Hymmnos, which itself might tip someone off to how I felt.
(Aurica: "I made you some BBQ Soda!"
Lyner: [I don't want her to know how I feel about this. But if I deliberately switch out of Hymmnos, she'll suspect that that's why.] "Thank you for your hard work on my behalf!")
It is much more compact and poetic, but I can imagine it leading to awkwardness even more often if it were used as a primary speaking language...
@haunomiko:
Well, you don't have to add emotion sounds if you don't want. That only affects the magic output of the phrase being said.
And Ayulsa, as always, a good job analyzing this part of the song. At this rate, you will be a Jakuri scholar before AT2 comes out!
Like Aquagon said, I suppose one can always leave out the emotion indicators when communicating information, though in the long run, that would probably defeat the purpose of speaking Hymmnos in the first place.
Also, I'm not sure if it was sheer synchronicity or what that I saw this essay on the same day that I read your fic, "The Reyvateil's Dilemma."
I suppose you could use them only when you specifically wanted to make a point about your emotions. Like we might say in English, "oh, I feel kind of bad about that, but it had to be done", or "wow, I'm really excited about going to the fair tonight"; you could restrict your use of emotion sounds to that.
I wonder if there's something to the idea that people in the past in that world (who spoke Hymmnos on a regular basis, presumably) were extremely emotionally open and honest. It must make Reyvateils feel quite exposed when they sing; and that's part of why they do it, I suppose, to pour out their emotions, but it must make them feel really stripped down, really very much like they're saying it all.
And, Jakuri scholar, woo! I can has official certification? :) velivolum, I don't think you're wrong, either; I think certainly a conflict between her love and her hatred, a desire to let go of the latter and a fear of being deceived or hurt if she does so, underlies most things she does, so likely that's at least an undercurrent to it even if you assume my interpretation.
Alternatively, she can't love herself yet because she can't accept the loving part of herself, so she separates that part off so that she doesn't have to *be* it but can still experience being loved...
Ah, I suppose if you can use it only sometimes, and if it isn't noticeable to leave it out, that would work.
I really wonder what literature in Hymmnos would be like. Since it's all in first-person, the story would either be in first person or would be told as an anecdote about someone the narrator knows of. I bet that would give it a very authentic, if-this-isn't-true-it-might-as-well-be sort of feel... I bet certain kinds of styles and themes would become popular because they worked well being told in that format.
It makes me think of the classical bardic tradition: how the old stories were very much passed on by word of mouth, told perhaps almost like urban legends, as "having happened to someone I know" or "having been witnessed with my own eyes" just to make the story exciting. Maybe it'd feel like that: very emotionally intimate, very personalised even when the common awareness is that the story didn't really happen to you.
You'd be very intimately connected to the storyteller as well as to the story, and connected to them through their story. If you sympathised with the story, you'd have to with them, too, since you'd be constantly hearing their emotion sounds.
Now I'm imagining epic poetry in Hymmnos. That would be very epic indeed.
Can't get openid to work...
I'm pretty sure that's the translation I wrote using Hymmnoserver and Google translator, plus a few years of not-quite-failed Japanese class, and I'm both pleased and mortified that it gets spread around, since I'm pretty sure it's full of mistakes (not to mention that I'm not sure how long it will be before people stop believing it was me!). I apologize to everyone for it.
Lazy's translation's has:
Echrra en chs ar dor.
(Unification, coexistance, harmony of the world)
Was paks ga chs na mea,
(I would have to die if I wanted to change)
en paul yor yora harton mea ...
(But I could feel something from you, love...)
I don't know if chs na mea means "I become nothing" ('naku naru' or 'become nothing' is a polite way of saying 'dying' in Japanese: like 'is no more') or if it means "become not me". As far as I understand it, "na" can mean "nothing", "not", and "no".
As for "en paul yor yora harton mea", literally word for word is "to/for feel you you* love me"
*plural?
I don't know Hymmnos grammar very well, maybe Aquagon or someone smart like him could help you out with it, but I get thrown off by paul yor yora harton mea. Is it feel the love you have for me, to make you all love me, or for me to feel the love that you have for eachother?
The Japanese translation in the lyric book is
だから、貴方達が私にとって何なのかを･･･試します
dakara, anata tachi ga watashi ni totte nan na no ka wo... tameshimasu
Which I'm pretty much guessing means something like, "But, for all your sake... I could try."
... That's pretty clearly different from the Hymmnos, so it doesn't help us here.
This is an example of what I meant when I said Hymmnos has few indistinct rules and is poetic by default: you can imply so many interpretations with a single sentence.
And yeah, "desfel" is probably hate, and got confused over the Kanji translation or something. The Kanji and the Hymmnos are sometimes pretty inconsistent in this one.
I'd love to learn enough Hymmnos to speak it or type it, but even though I've done a little bit of study in Spanish and Japanese I'm always too shy to try practicing them with other people, so I'd probably be too shy to use Hymmnos.
Remember that we have already two examples of Hymmnos literature: the myth of Rhaplanca and the story of Harvestasya.
And dustin, if you want to learn better Hymmnos, check down here:
conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Conlang:Hymmnos
There you have all the Hymmno Server translated to english (and with some words that don't appear there)
I'm pretty sure that's the translation I wrote using Hymmnoserver and Google translator, plus a few years of not-quite-failed Japanese class, and I'm both pleased and mortified that it gets spread around, since I'm pretty sure it's full of mistakes (not to mention that I'm not sure how long it will be before people stop believing it was me!). I apologize to everyone for it.
Hey, don't apologise! It may not be perfect, but it certainly helped me realise a few things about the song that didn't make sense to me before, so I really appreciate it.
I don't know if chs na mea means "I become nothing" ('naku naru' or 'become nothing' is a polite way of saying 'dying' in Japanese: like 'is no more') or if it means "become not me". As far as I understand it, "na" can mean "nothing", "not", and "no".
Ah, so that's where the dying part came from; I had no idea how that came out of "chs na mea". Even if it's in the Japanese, I personally have a harder time seeing how this translation is relevant to Mir, or at least I much prefer theidea that she's splitting in two to enable herself to (feel her own) love, as that feels much more her; but AT2 might shed some light.
This is an example of what I meant when I said Hymmnos has few indistinct rules and is poetic by default: you can imply so many interpretations with a single sentence.
It is true, and I do wonder if that was intentional. It is a rather compact, haiku-like language, where many possibilities unfold from a simple statement.
And yeah, "desfel" is probably hate, and got confused over the Kanji translation or something. The Kanji and the Hymmnos are sometimes pretty inconsistent in this one.
*nods* Desfel is definitely hate or "hateable" (detestable, unpleasant). So if the kanji says different... well, I'm not sure what to think, unless they meant to imply that desfel can also mean that.
I'd love to learn enough Hymmnos to speak it or type it, but even though I've done a little bit of study in Spanish and Japanese I'm always too shy to try practicing them with other people, so I'd probably be too shy to use Hymmnos.
Aww. I've spoken in it a tiny bit. Mostly set phrases. :)
Ah, I've been avoiding most forums, AT-specific blogs/posts, and the like because I didn't want to run into spoilers (other than that I already know who Jakuri is, because Ayulsa might have exploded if he didn't say it). So I actually haven't encountered Rhaplanca at all, and as for Harvestaya I think I assumed (though I'm not sure) that it's important in AT2, so haven't looked at anything about it.
Anything you can share about the structure of these works or how the language affects how they're told? Are they in first person, or are they as stories being told about someone else? Do they seem more real and more like something that actually happened because of the way they're told?
These are stories being told about someone else. And there's nothing spoilerish about reading through both stories (they aren't directly connected to AT2 in any way, since Rhaplanca's myth is from very ancient times, and Harvestasya's story looks like happens between AT1 and AT2, looking at the story and how AT2 ends).
because Ayulsa might have exploded if he didn't say it
...yes. XD XD And given that AT2's delayed till January, I would have had an even harder time holding it in/not mentioning it anywhere.
Oh, that reminds me: now that you know that particular spoiler there's a song that I want to mention that makes me think of her and that I wouldn't mind filking: "What Have I Done?" from Les Miserables. The song is pretty appropriate anyway, but the very end is even more fitting if you know that she takes a new name.
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