Jacques Brel - "Le Moribond"

"Seasons in the Sun" is an English-language adaptation of the song "Le Moribond" by Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel^[1]with lyrics by American singer-poet Rod McKuen.^[2] It became a worldwide hit in 1974 for Canadian singer Terry Jacks and became a Christmas Number 1 in 1999 for Westlife. Jacks's version is one of the fewer than forty all-time singles to have sold 10 million copies worldwide.

The song is a dying protagonist's farewell to relatives and friends. The protagonist mentions how hard it will be to die now that the spring season has arrived (historically, spring is portrayed as the season of new life).

Original version

The original French-language song is a sardonic ballad, in which the speaker gives backhanded farewells to his adulterous wife and her lover and the priest he disagreed with while sarcastically expressing his wish that there should be singing and dancing when he is buried. Before Jacks popularized the song, earlier recordings had been released by The Kingston Trio with the first cover version of McKuen's translation in 1963 and the British band The Fortunes in 1968.

roots of English

Is English Really a Germanic Language?

The Korean alphabet

The Korean alphabet, known in South Korea as Hangul (also transcribed Hangeul) and as Chosŏn'gŭl/Chosŏn Muntcha in North Korea and China, is the alphabet that has been used to write the Korean language since the 15th century.^[1] It was created during the Joseon Dynasty in 1443 by King Sejong the Great. Now, the alphabet is the official script of both South Korea and North Korea, and co-official in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefectureand Changbai Korean Autonomous County of China's Jilin Province. In South Korea, Hangul is used primarily to write the Korean language as using Hanja (Chinese characters) in typical Korean writing had fallen out of common usage during the late 1990s. Hanja is still used to some extent in art, academic and government documents, newspapers, and high level Korean in South Korea; however, North Korea banned the use of Hanja in public since 1964.^[2]

In its classical and modern forms, the alphabet has 19 consonant and 21 vowel letters. However, instead of being written sequentially like the letters of the Latin alphabet, Hangul letters are grouped into blocks, such as 한 han, each of which transcribes a syllable. That is, although the syllable 한 han may look like a single character, it is actually composed of three letters: ㅎ h, ㅏ a, and ㄴ n. Each syllabic block consists of two to six letters, including at least one consonant and one vowel. These blocks are then arranged horizontally from left to right or vertically from top to bottom. Each Korean word consists of one or more syllables, hence one or more blocks. The number of mathematically possible distinct blocks is 11,172 (see "South Korean order" below), though there are far fewer possible syllables allowed by Korean phonotactics, and not all phonotactically possible syllables occur in actual Korean words. For a phonological description, see Korean phonology. Among possible 11,172 Hangul syllables the most frequent 256 have cumulative frequency of 88.2% and with the top 512 ones it reaches 99.9%.^[3]

IPA

 

IPA Chart With Sounds

 

The International Phonetic Alphabet (unofficially—though commonly—abbreviated IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of oral language.^[1] The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers,linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators.^[2][3]

The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of oral language: phones, phonemes, intonation, and the separation of words and syllables.^[1] To represent additional qualities of speech, such as tooth gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft palate, an extended set of symbols called the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet may be used.^[2]

IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two basic types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a single letter, [t], or with a letter plus diacritics, [t̺ʰ], depending on how precise one wishes to be.^{[note 2]} Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription; thus, /t/ is less specific than, and could refer to, either [t̺ʰ]or [t], depending on the context and language.

Occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005,^[4] there are 107 letters, 52 diacritics, and four prosodic marks in the IPA. These are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA.^[5]

Latin pronunciation

What Latin Sounded Like - and how we know

Vedas

Published on Mar 25, 2013
This is a comprehensive collection of the spiritual texts recited in Sanskrit with translations in English & Hindi

समाधि

Samādhi (Sanskrit: समाधि, Hindi pronunciation: [səˈmaːd̪ʱi]), also called samāpatti, in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and yogicschools refers to a state of meditative consciousness. It is a meditative absorption or trance, attained by the practice of dhyāna.^[1] Insamādhi the mind becomes still. It is a state of being totally aware of the present moment; a one-pointedness of mind^{[web 1]}.

In Buddhism, it is the last of the eight elements of the Noble Eightfold Path.^{[web 2]} In the Ashtanga Yoga tradition, it is the eighth and final limb identified in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali.^[2][3]

Pali

Several years ago, concurrently with its ongoing research into Vipassana, the Vipassana Research Institute (VRI) assumed a monumental undertaking: the publication of an authentic version of the Pali literature in Devanagari script. To understand the significance of this project, it is necessary to briefly describe the sources of Vipassana Meditation.

This web site is based on the Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana CD published by the Vipassana Research Institute. Based at Dhamma Giri, Igatpuri, near Mumbai, India, the Vipassana Research Institute also publishes literature & disseminates information related to Vipassana Meditation Technique as taught byS.N.Goenka in the tradition ofSayagyi U Ba Khin.

Vipassana is a universal, scientific method towards purifying the mind. It is the practical essence of the teachings of the Buddha, who taught Dhamma - the Universal Law of Nature.
 
Pali (Pāli) is a Prakrit language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of much of the earliest extant literature ofBuddhism as collected in the Pāli Canon or Tipiṭaka and is the sacred languageof Buddhism.

Pali Language Study Aids

© 2012

dvandva

A dvandva (Sanskrit द्वन्द्व dvandva 'pair') is a linguistic compound in which multiple individual nouns are concatenated to form an agglomerated compound word in which the conjunction 'and' has been elided to form a new word with a distinct semantic field. So, for instance, the individual words 'brother' and 'sister' may be agglomerated to 'brothersister' to express "siblings". The grammatical number of such constructs is generally plural or dual. The term dvandva is borrowed from Sanskrit, a language in which these linguistic compounds are common. Dvandvas also exist in Avestan, the Old Iranian language related to Sanskrit, as well as in numerous Modern Indic languages descended from the Prakrits. Several far-eastern languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean also have dvandvas. Dvandvas may also be found occasionally in European languages, but are relatively rare.

Examples include:

• Sanskrit mātāpitarau (मातापितरौ) for "parents" (lit. 'mother-father').
• Chinese shānchuān and Japanese yamakawa (山川) for 'mountains and rivers'^{[further explanation needed]}
• Modern Greek μαχαιροπήρουνο /maçeɾoˈpiɾuno/ for "cutlery" (lit. 'fork-knife'), ανδρόγυνο /anˈðɾoʝino/ for "married couple" (lit. 'husband-wife').
• Finnic maa-ilma ("land-air") for "world".
• Friulian marimont ("sea-world") for "the entire world, the universe"

Dvadvas should not be confused with agglutination, which also concatenates words but is a different process.

Voice (grammar)

In grammar, the voice (also called diathesis) of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, the verb is said to be in the passive voice.

For example, in the sentence:

The cat ate the mouse.

The verb "ate" is in the active voice, but in the sentence:

The mouse was eaten by the cat.

The verbal phrase "was eaten" is passive.

In

The hunter killed the bear.

The verb "killed" is in the active voice, and the doer of the action is the "hunter". To make this passive:

The bear was killed by the hunter.

The verbal phrase "was killed" is followed by the word "by" and then by the doer "hunter".

In a transformation from an active-voice clause to an equivalent passive-voice construction, the subject and the direct object switch grammatical roles. The direct object gets promoted to subject, and the subject demoted to an (optional) complement. In the examples above, the mouse serves as the direct object in the active-voice version, but becomes the subject in the passive version. The subject of the active-voice version, the cat, becomes part of a prepositional phrase in the passive version of the sentence, and could be left out entirely.

The passive voice is employed in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the verb. That is, it undergoes an action or has its state changed.^[1]

In the passive voice the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the doer) of the action denoted by the verb.

The Spanish language and the English language use a periphrastic passive voice; that is, it is not a single word form, but rather a construction making use of other word forms. Specifically, it is made up of a form of the auxiliary verb to be and a past participle of the main verb. In other languages, such as Latin, the passive voice is simply marked on the verb by inflection: librum legit "He reads the book"; liber legitur "The book is read".

Some languages (such as Albanian, Bengali, Fula, Tamil, Sanskrit, Icelandic, Swedish and Ancient Greek) have a middle voice. This is a set of inflections or constructions which is to some extent different from both the active and passive voices. The middle voice is said to be in the middle between the active and the passive voices because the subject often cannot be categorized as either agent or patient but may have elements of both. For example it may express what would be an intransitive verb in English. For example, inThe casserole cooked in the oven, cooked is syntactically active but semantically passive. In Classical Greek, the middle voice often has a reflexive sense: the subject acts on or for itself, such as "The boy washes himself", or "The boy washes". It can be transitive or intransitive. It can occasionally be used in a causative sense, such as "The father causes his son to be set free", or "The father ransoms his son".

In English there is no longer a verb form for the middle voice, though some uses may be classified as middle voice, often resolved via a reflexive pronoun, as in "Fred shaved", which may be expanded to "Fred shaved himself" – contrast with active "Fred shaved John" or passive "John was shaved by Fred". This need not be reflexive, as in "my clothes soaked in detergent overnight". English used to have a distinct form, called the passival, which was displaced over the early 19th century by the passive progressive (progressive passive), and is no longer used in English.^[2][3] In the passival, one would say "the house is building", which is today instead "the house is being built"; likewise "the meal is eating", which is now "the meal is being eaten". Note that the similar "Fred is shaving" and "the clothes are soaking" remain grammatical. It is suggested that the progressive passive was popularized by the Romantic poets, and is connected with Bristol usage.^[2][4]

Many deponent verbs in Latin are survivals of the Proto-Indo-European middle voice.

Topic-prominent languages like Mandarin tend not to employ the passive voice as frequently. Mandarin-speakers construct the passive voice by using the coverb 被 (bèi) and rearranging the usual word order.^[5] For example, this sentence using active voice:

Note: the first line is in Traditional Chinese while the second is Simplified Chinese.

狗	咬了	這個	男人。
狗	咬了	这个	男人。
Gǒu	yǎo-le	zhège	nánrén.
dog	bite-PERFECT	this	man
"A dog has bitten this man."

corresponds to the following sentence using passive voice. Note that the agent phrase is optional.

這個	男人	被	(狗)	咬了。
这个	男人	被	(狗)	咬了。
Zhège	nánrén	bèi	(gǒu)	yǎo-le.
This	man	BEI	dog	bite-PERFECT.
"This man was bitten (by a dog)."

In addition, through the addition of the auxiliary verb "to be" (shì) the passive voice is frequently used to emphasise the identity of the actor. This example places emphasis on thedog, presumably as opposed to some other animal:

這個	男人	是	被	狗	咬了。
这个	男人	是	被	狗	咬了。
Zhège	nánrén	shì	bèi	gǒu	yǎo-le.
This	man	to be	BEI	dog	bite-PERFECT.
"This man was bitten by a dog."

Although a topic-prominent language, Japanese employs the passive voice quite frequently, and has two types of passive voice, one that corresponds to that in English and an indirect passive not found in English. This indirect passive is used when something undesirable happens to the speaker.

彼	は	泥棒	に	財布	を	盗まれた。
Kare	wa	dorobō	ni	saifu	o	nusumareta.
He	TOPIC	thief	AGENT	wallet	OBJECT	steal-PASSIVE-PAST
"His wallet was stolen by a thief."

僕	は	彼女	に	嘘	を	つかれた。
Boku	wa	kanojo	ni	uso	o	tsukareta.
I	TOPIC	her	AGENT	lie	OBJECT	tell-PASSIVE-PAST.
"I was lied to by her." (or "She lied to me.")