Because we have a large migrant population, many of the most recent arrivals were struggling with English, especially the Australian version of English. Therefore English for Speakers of Other Languages was a well attended course of study for the Technical College where I worked. Also, we did courses at work to help us cope with day to day customer service & to encourage us to be empathetic & culturally sensitive. Like most government-funded establishments here, we have multilingual signs around the college for the benefit of those speaking the more usual migrant languages like Vietnamese, Chinese (hopeless
), Arabic & Russian ( both also hopeless), Greek (not so bad due to algebra, statistics etc), Italian, Spanish, Portuguese etc. French, which I did study up to University level, is almost always absent, & the nearest other language to French is Portuguese, rather than Spanish. Whilst there, one fun activity while U wait, & wait...
was to try to match up the foreign language versions with what they are trying to say in English. A teacher suggested we look at the languages & see which ones we found easiest to figure out what is said without an English version being available to us. Eg,
Courtenay's Cornish example:
An Lew, an Wragh ha'n Dhilasva
The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, I expect.
Pennsevik Caspian
Pennsevik there has to mean Prince. By the way Pen in place names, like Penrith or Penshurst is something to do with head, so does Pen or Penn in Pennsevik mean something like Head lord, perhaps? Just like a Duke comes from the Latin word Dux, Ducis, meaning leader. Penrith, by the way, actually means Red Head. Cornish, Welsh, Breton & probably the original Celtic language of the tribes of Strathclyde must have been Brythonic rather than Gaelic, like in Gaul, Scotland & Ireland.
Viaj ??? an Bora (still not sure which word to use for "Treader"!!)
Viaj then means Voyage doesn't it? Whilst Bora is the Dawn?
An Gador Arghansek
The Silver Chair, I expect. But in Cornish, do you put the adjective first, like in English or do you put it following as in French? "Arghansek", because of its similarity to Argentum in Latin, L'Argent in French & Ag in the Periodical table in Chemistry, must surely mean silver in Cornish as well, whilst Gador must mean chair. C'était La Chaise Argent en Français. By the way, where you have other metals to mine such as tin & lead, it sometimes happens that Silver is also mined there. Would that also be the case in Cornwall?
An Margh ha'y Vaw
I guess that Margh means horse whilst Vaw means boy?
Noy an Huder
Noy must mean "nephew" whilst "Huder" means Magician. Or is it the other way around?
An Diwettha Batel
Now this is tricky. I take it that Diwettha is last, whilst Batel could be battle? Or, again, it could be the other way around as in the Silver Chair.