Saturday 18 April 2009

Gjengangere second-hand shop

ENG: With all the redecorating Nora has done after Spook House opened, she can almost singelhandedly keep a second hand store supplied. Luckily for her, it didn't take long before one opened either and next to Spook House, too, very convenient for Nora indeed! It's called Gjengangere (The revenants), and the owner and manager is Osvald Halving.

NOR: Etter all møbelutskiftingen og oppussingen Nora har satt i gang siden Spook House åpnet, kan hun bortimot egenhendig holde en bruktbutikk forsynt med varer. Heldigvis for henne tok det ikke lang tid før det åpnet en heller, vegg i vegg med Spook House, ganske så hendig for Nora. Den heter Gjengangere, eies og drives av Osvald Halving.













ENG: No sooner has Nora brought some new stuff to the shop, my daughter's doll Carol Line, married to Helmer's brother Henrik, is there to see if there could be something of use for her home.
So the little café in Gjengangere soon became their favourite place for a cup of tea. The café is run by Osvald's industrious wife Martha, who also cleans Nora and Helmer's house. I think she might have given her husband an inside tip of all the old furniture that was piling up, with the sole purpose of being in her way.

NOR: Ikke før har Nora levert noe nytt til bruktbutikken så er min datters dukke Carol Line, gift med Helmers tvillingbror Henrik, på plass for å se om det er noe hun kan bruke i sitt hus, så den lille kafeen i Gjengangere ble fort et yndet møtested for dem. Kafeen drives av Osvalds driftige kone Martha, som også vasker huset til Nora og Helmer. Ikke umulig at hun har tipset mannen om alle de gamle møblene som hopet seg opp hos arbeidsgiverne hennes, uten annen hensikt å gjøre det vanskelig å komme til med støvsugeren.


17 comments:

MiniKat said...

What a wonderful collection of treasures in the shop!

Pubdoll said...

Thanks! I don't have much space for dollhouse storage, so I "donated" all my extras to this second-hand shop instead.

Rebecca said...

Lovely! Just the kind of little shop you want to browse around, and what a wonderful idea to have a cafe there too! Just like some real antique shops. I've been thinking I should have a second-hand shop for all my spare pieces - just have to find some appropriate rooms and somewhere to put it! You've given me some good ideas - I like the way you use the Bodo Hennig and Lundby wall units to display things.

Pubdoll said...

Thank you Rebecca and thanks for the Bodo Hennig tip! I have seen the wall unit in the Puppenhausmuseum, but forgot about it when posting this room. I visited your blog - love your Lundby house!
I noticed you are a linguist, my husband is a linguist wannabe and is right now lying on the sofa, reading Greville Corbett's Gender after a tip from an Australian:)

Julianna said...

I like this shop very much too!!

Pubdoll said...

Thanks Julianna!

askartaja said...

Very nice! Just like right second hand shop!

Pubdoll said...

Thank you askartaja!
I have spent almost half an hour looking at your blog now, and think it's fabulous! Especially what was translated as the craft shop!
I liked your Lundby house a lot, too!

Rebecca said...

It's a small world in more ways than one! I found Gender very useful when I wrote my thesis (a grammar of an Australian Aboriginal language which has four genders). Greville Corbett was presenting at a conference in Sydney last year - he's a very engaging presenter.

Pubdoll said...

- Dyirbal, my husband says, or maybe not... That would probably have lost the third gender by now. On assignment in Ungarinjin?

I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about...

Rebecca said...

Gurr-goni, closely related to Burarra, which I think Corbett mentions - a language of Arnhem Land, in the north of the Northern Territory.
(None of your other followers will have the faintest idea what we're talking about by now!!!)

Trond Engen said...

Rebecca: Helene told me to ask my questions myself (not for lack of interest but because there's apparently been some technical problems and she wanted me to try to add a comment from my job computer).

Browsing fast through Corbett's book I can't find Burarra, and if it's there he must have missed it in the index. Both languages are on Ethnologue's map, though, and of course at Linguist List's tree. Since Gurr-Goni is a dying language you must have heard a clock ticking as you did your work. Or did you work with data collected before?

Anyway, how is the gender system of Gurr-Goni?

And, completely unrelated: What's the current status of the hypothesis that Pama-Nyungan spread from Arnhem land (or perhaps Cape York) following the introduction of the dog to Australia?

Rebecca said...

Hmm, I thought Burarra was mentioned, but I don't own Gender - I do have Corbett's book Number, which mentions both Burarra and Gurr-goni. Both have four genders - masculine (male humans & large animals; others categorised by species; some implements; moon), feminine, (female humans & large animals, others categorised by species; some implements (eg sacred) sun), vegetable (most plants (some are masc or fem) & plant foods, boats, planes, books) and neuter (including land, language, water, etc), distinguished on adjectives, demonstratives, and verbs in the singular. In the dual number (or unit-augmented, actually!) only feminine and non-feminine are distinguished, and not even those in the plural. (That's a VERY brief overview.)
Actually, children are still growing up speaking Gurr-goni - maybe not all who would have 20 years ago, though. It's a very small group, so is more endangered than slightly larger languages - but all are under threat from English and Kriol, especially when the NT government decides not to continue bilingual education, and says all students must be taught in English.
Re P-N: I have to admit I don't know. I think linguists working on proto-Pama-Nyungan have been trying to reconstruct sub-groups solidly - I will ask some historical linguists (also an area I have done some research in, but not for a while).
Thankyou Helene for letting us borrow your second-hand shop! A very good place to meet and chat.

Pubdoll said...

Thank you Rebecca, there's always a seat in my café for you :)
Perhaps you would like a cup of coffee on the house while you wait for my husband to join you? (He's not at home at the moment)

Trond Engen said...

Rebecca: Sorry for the delay. The café must be out of coffee by now. My answer from the other day seems to have disappeared into the void.

Glad to hear that the language is still acquiring native speakers.

Being out of town and away from my books I'm not sure of anything, but isn't the gender system suspiciously like Dyirbal's (of Dixon fame)? Dyirbal is neither a neighbour nor a relative of Gurr-goni, and that triggers my next question: Is the M-F-V-N four-way split an areal feature with distribution across linguistic families in Australia?

I know, of course, that the suggested PN/dog connection is of little linguistic relevance, at least in its most narrow sense, but it's interesting as a glimpse into Australian pre-history. I learned not long ago that the dog is a relative newcomer to Australia, and thus an indication of contact with the outside world, and I happened to notice that its assumed arrival roughly coincides with the sudden spread of Malayo-Polynesian through the Indonesian archipelago. I'm sure there are many ways to explain it, but it's not difficult to imagine a major upheaval among the indigenous peoples of the islands, triggering someone from Timor or Papua to pack his family and dogs into a boat and take to the sea, and finally giving some lucky people on the north coast of Australia a major technological advantage.

Amy's Miniatures And Smalls said...

Hello There. I don't know if you'll see this comment or not but I wanted to leave a note. Oh my GOSH... Wow-O-wow! I still have not seen everything on your blog but I wanted you to know I keep looking and looking so much that I usually get so wrapped up that I forget to leave a comment. Glorious!!!

Pubdoll said...

Thanks so much Amy, I really appreciate you taking the time both to read my old posts and commenting as well!