Friday, August 20, 2010

Something on in Arborea

Just posted a new chronicle on the Principality of Galatea's blog. This time, the action is set in the Kingdom of Arborea/Sardinia, shortly after the arrival in Monte-Cristo of the Catalan/Galatan legate Marquis of Vilana; on his way to the Presipality, Vilana had left a mysterious missive to be delivered to the island's Imperial Viceroy, Count of Erill (a Galatan subject, by the way).

I've taken advantge of context for posting some supplementary sets of flags on my blog, this time devoted to the Holy Empire's land and sea flags. These come to increase my current collection, that can be freely downloaded from the National Library of Galatea.

Besides, a storm is about to break upon the Galatan battlefields, while the Two Crowns armies keep their slow but apparently unstoppable progression towards the Principality's capital city, Barcinona. Battle chronicles to follow shortly...

3 comments:

abdul666 said...

How does one say 'No pasaran' in Galatan?

And 'Hasta la Victoria siempre'?
'Libertad or Muerte'?


(Sorry, no inverted"!"on my keyboard, and I'm afraid it would not appear on an English-speaking blog, anyway -but does Catalan use it, btw?)

Most sincere (if not official) wishes from Monte-Cristo

Soldadets said...

I do have the Spanish keyboard, so that let's give these characters a try:

Inverted, or initial "!" ---> "¡"
Inverted question mark "?" --> "¿"

These are exclusive to Spanish language- Officially, Catalan does not have them, although they've recently started to be used too. As for myself, I occasionally do use them at long sentences, or when in the need to ensure readers from the very start that my sentence is not assertive, but interrogative instead. I must admit them to be quite useful in certain circumstances -at work, for example, where people use to read too fast, and misunderstandings become usual.

Soldadets said...

In Spanish language, it is compulsory to mark interrogative & admirative sentences with these special, initial marks.

So, "They shall not pass!" should be read in Spanish and Catalan like these:

es - "¡No pasarán!"
ca - "No passaran!"

The other mottos you mentioned are:

es - "¡Hasta la victoria, siempre!"
ca - "Fins a la victòria, sempre!"

(This one seems to me quite an odd sentence, from a linguistic point of view. However, it was historically used, so... How should it be said in English? "Up to Victory, ever!"? )

es - "¡Libertad o muerte!"
ca - "Llibertat o mort!"

Historially, the Catalan equivalent for this was "Viurem lliures o morirem!" ("Shall we live free, or shall we die!"). It was commonly used during the *real* 1713-1714 campaign.