Subject:
R: [NABOKV-L] [Fwd: Thorns]
From:
"pndale" <kubea@libero.it>
Date:
Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:26:15 +0100
To:
"Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>


 
I'm glad to note that Giulia Visintin took the proverb as I did. The proverb ldoes indeed look very Sardinian in form and syntax. One sees this from 'andet' which is a regularly formed present hortatory subjunctive in the logudorese dialect. The problem however is that Sardinian dialects show a bewildering richness of phonetic variation from town to town. 'isculzu' looks like the form registered for inland, central dialects there, iskultsu/iskurtsu. In logudorese one would expect 'skurtsu'. Again, 'ispinaza' evidently corresponds to 'Italian 'spina' (thorn, prickle'), with what looks like a Spanish suffixal variation on ispinattu, which however in northern logudorese means 'hackle' in the trade jargon of weaving, a steel flax-comb, though to complicate things 'ispinattsu' can indeed mean 'spinach'. Contextually the sense however is thorn.
'Whoever sows thorns, should not go abroad shoeless'. The problem is therefore which dialect of Sardinian, and what is the literary source? 
 
 

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