Monday 3 January 2011

Glossing Nawa'i (2)

As noted in an earlier post, for the student whose first language is English, the absence of dictionaries and lexicons defining and explaining Chaghatay Turki words and phrases is frustrating.

Another useful aide I've (re)discovered is Cagataische Sprachstudien: grammatikalischer Umriss und Chrestomathie, enthaltend zwoelf Original-Auszuege mit Uebersetzung, nebst Woerterbh dieser ost-tuerkischen Sprache und verwandten Dialekten (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1867; repr. Amsterdam, Philo Press, 1975), by Arminius Vambery, the 19th-Century, Hungarian scholar/explorer/public nuisance who acquired a vast range of materials during his peregrinations in Central Asia.

As the title reveals, it is essentially a chrestomathy, featuring transcribed passages from various Chaghatay Turki texts accompanied by German translations, with a glossary at the back. It also comes with a helpful overview of basic Chaghatay grammar, which at least has the benefit of utilizing Arabic script, rather than the transliterated Latin script examples featured in works on Chaghatay grammar by inter alia Bodrogligeti and Eckmann.

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