Which formerly Ottoman-occupied peoples understand “s–tir” today?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-01 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

OP noted that there were many answers already stashed away under What does Siktir (سیکتیر) means in Persian? I’ll paste here the comments that Dimitra Triantafyllidou and I left there for Greek. Some quite obvious parallels with Albanian and Romanian, as reported by Aziz Dida and Diana Crețu.


Nick:

In Greek it just means “Turkish word for ‘get fuckedʼ ”; it’s actually never used in its literal meaning of copulation.

Cretan weddings traditionally take three days, and the final dish served to the guests (typically the entire goddamn village) is a simple rice broth.

The Cretan name for the dish is σιχτίρ πιλάφι sikhtir pilafi. “Fuck-off pilaf.”

Dimitra:

There is a Thracian dance (often danced in weddings) called “sikhtir havasi” It’s monotonous, fast and the footwork is not all that easy after you’ve had a few. The idea is the musicians started playing this to get people tired and get them to leave. It’s the first part of the video. It’s not that boring for a minute or two but after that…

Nick:

The Air in Fuck-Off! And it’s got the same purpose to it as Haydn’s Farewell Symphony! Oh, that’s delicious!

What is the best way to learn to speak Greek fluently?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-01 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

There’s the generic answer: the fine old Greek saying, Η μισή ντροπή δική σου, η άλλη μισή δική τους. “Half the embarrassment is yours, the other half is theirs.”

Yes. They will think you sound ridiculous, no fear of that. They will also be hugely impressed (especially if they’re in the Greek diaspora), and will encourage your efforts. Dive in. And quote that proverb to them. Give ’em sass. They will love it.

Martin Pickering, back me up?

There are specific answers; see e.g. Dimitra Triantafyllidou’s answer to I’m learning Greek. What is the best way to improve my speaking/grammar skills?

What did your language sound like 1,000 years ago?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-01 | Comments: 2 Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

Greek: 1000 years ago, the language was already Early Modern Greek. Unfortunately, we have very very very few records of the vernacular to sift from, out of the archaic Greek everyone was writing.

  • We have the Bulgarian Greek inscriptions from 1200 years ago, but by 1000 years ago, the Bulgars were using Slavonic.
  • We have vernacular phrases being quoted hither and thither from 900 years ago.
  • We have vernacular texts that we kinda sorta date from 900 years ago, but their language is probably closer to what the scribes wrote in the copies we have, which is nearer to 700 years ago.

So pinning down the vernacular from 1000 years ago is tricky.

The closest I’ll mention here is this snippet of a song about Alexios I Komnenos escaping a conspiracy from 1031, recorded (with much embarrassment about the vulgarity of the language) by his daughter Anna Comnena in her Alexiad:

Το Σάββατον της Τυρινής
χαρής, Αλέξη, εννόησές το
και την Δευτέραν το πρωί
ύπα καλώς, γεράκιν μου.

On Cheesefare Saturday
rejoice, Alexi, you worked it out.
And on Monday morning
fly well, my hawk.

In Contemporary Greek that would be:

Το Σάββατο της Τυρινής
να χαρείς, Αλέξη, το κατάλαβες
και τη Δευτέρα το πρωί
πήγαινε καλά, γεράκι μου.

Quite close; and for all that I changed two words, the first word (εννόησές) could still be used. The second word (υπάγω > ύπα) is still used, but its conjugation has changed, so people wouldn’t understand it.

The only phoneme to have changed since was υ (and οι), switching from /y/ to /i/. (So ύπα for “go!” was /ypa/.) In fact, we have a poem from 1030, making fun of a hillbilly priest pronouncing upsilon as /i/: so the modern pronunciation was already around at the time of the song snippet.

The only substantive difference, really, is all the final n’s being dropped. My guess: Modern Greek speakers would be reminded of Cypriot, which is phonologically conservative. (It also keeps double consonants; I have no idea when they disappeared from the rest of Greek, but I suspect it was later.)

Oh, that song snippet? Anna Comnena was not going to leave it alone in such vulgar garb. She appends a translation into something more decent:

κατὰ μὲν τὸ Τυρώνυμον Σάββατον ὑπέρευγέ σοι τῆς ἀγχινοίας, Ἀλέξιε, τὴν δὲ μετὰ τὴν Κυριακὴν Δευτέραν ἡμέραν καθάπέρ τις ὑψιπέτης ἱέραξ ἀφίπτασο τῶν ἐπιβουλευόντων βαρβάρων.

On the Saturday with the name of cheese, much commendation for your sagacity, Alexius. And on the day of Monday after the Sunday, just like some high-flying hawk, you have flown away from the barbarians who meant you harm.

Were all books of the New Testament written in perfectly correct Koine Greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-01 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

Revelation is notorious for its grammatical errors; google Revelation and Solecism (fancy Greek for “bad grammar”) or Barbarism (fancy Greek for “L2 Greek”). You’ll see lots of attempts at explaining it, from the straightforward “he barely spoke Greek” to “he was cutting and pasting bits of the Septuagint without adjusting the grammar” to “there’s a deeper theological reason for it”.

Someone recently did a PhD on it, which seems to get a bit too theological for even theologians, as seen in this review of Morphological and Syntactical Irregularities in the Book of Revelation.

How has pronunciation vs written form evolved in the History of English? Why is it so confusing, to the point that you have spelling contests?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-01 | Comments: 3 Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics, Writing Systems

Up until the late Middle Ages, English spelling (at least, as we reconstruct it) is not that bad. It is internally consistent, and, importantly, it varies from region to region, because they actually spoke different dialects from region to region. Yeah, the mute final <e> was an annoying way to indicate that a vowel was long, but you’re not left completely in outer space.

A sequence of bad things happened at around the same time in the 1500s.

Printing was invented, which motivated standardising spelling. And freezing it in time. Not as frozen as we now think, there was still plenty of variability, but the 1500s is the last time English spelling makes sense.

Unfortunately, the 1500s was a bad time to be fixing the spelling of English. It was halfway through the Great English Vowel Shift. It was at the start of a bunch of other sound changes, some of which were pretty radical. What happened to <gh> was nuts, which is why the pronunciation of <gh> now makes no sense.

(That <gh> was a /x/, like the <j> in Spanish. So throughout used to be pronounced /θɹuːxuːt/. Seriously.)

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the learnèd folk of the English language rediscovered Latin and Greek. So they started attempting to spell words in a fashion more appropriate to their Latin and Greek roots. And occasionally, even getting it right.

Sounds kept changing; English spelling didn’t. They changed pretty recently. Cue Samuel Johnson:

I remember an instance: when I published the Plan for my Dictionary, Lord Chesterfield told me that the word great should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state; and Sir William Yonge sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat, and that none but an Irishman would pronounce it grait. Now here were two men of the highest rank, the one, the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other, the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, won—which, I guess, makes Irishmen of us all. (That’s why Reagan is pronounced Raygun. And why the Irish have a cup of tay.)

But we didn’t change the spelling of great to match; we still spell it as if it rhymes with seat.

Why no spelling reform in English, then? Well, as English-language spelling reform says, it could have been even worse. There was some 17th century reform: we don’t use warre or sinne or toune any more. Webster did, well, some things in the US. But really, the opportunity was lost in the 16th century, and we do lack the kind of centralised control that made centralised spelling reform possible elsewhere.

In Koine Greek, what is the difference between the perfect tense and the aorist tense?

By: | Post date: 2016-09-30 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

Ancient Greek has four past tenses; Modern Greek has two, and an auxiliary formation for the other two. The tenses differ in aspect.

The imperfect emphasises that the past action was ongoing or continuous.

The perfect emphasises that the past action is now complete. The main reason for doing that is, as Konstantinos Konstantinides points out, because the results of that past action are still relevant now.

The pluperfect emphasises that the past action was already complete before something else happened.

The last tense is the aorist; in other languages, it is usually called the simple past. It doesn’t indicate whether the action is or was complete or ongoing. In fact, aorist is the Greek word for “indefinite”. It simply states the action happened in the past, and it acts as a default past tense.

If you have to infer an aspect for the aorist, you can infer (by default) that the action is complete, but unlike the perfect, the results of the action are not with us now: it is, so to speak, history.

What does the Greek word παράκλητος (paráklitos) mean? What was the original Aramaic/Hebrew word?

By: | Post date: 2016-09-29 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

I’ll add to the other answers there’s a subtle nuance in paráklētos. A nuance so subtle, you’ll most often see it discussed in explanations of paráklētos, and the evidence for the distinction can be shaky.

Paráklētos follows the pattern of preposition + verbal adjective; it literally means “by-called” (hence, helper or advocate, some you call to be by your side). These kind of compounds are meant to have a distinction of permanence, according to how they are accented. If they are accented on the final syllable (paraklētós, -ḗ, -ón), the state they describe is temporary: it has happened once-off. If they are accented on the antepenult (paráklētos, -on), the state is permanent. So a paraklētós is a guy you can call on at that particular moment, to get you out of a jam. A paráklētos is someone you always call on to get you out of jams, a permanent advocate.

To illustrate with another example I just made up: if you describe someone as perirrapistós, “around-beaten”, you’re saying he’s just been beaten up. If you’re saying someone is perirrápistos, you’re saying they’re constantly being beaten up, that they look all beaten up, maybe that they’re a permanent victim.

Can modern day Greeks understand and read ancient scriptures in ancient ruins (Like this one?)

By: | Post date: 2016-09-29 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics, Modern Greek

Variant of what the others have said.

Ruins featuring Roman era Koine? There’ll be some faux amis, but the alphabet shape is recognisable, the grammar and vocabulary you can cope with if you’re educated.

Ruins from 500 BC? The alphabet shapes vary from city to city; the ancient dialects can be very different from Attic. Can you? Not without specialist training.

I’ll counter Dimitrios Michmizos’ answer with the Gortyn code. A scripture (well, a legal code) in ruins in Crete. In Doric and boustrophedon.

… Yeah.

OK, how about a transcription. From IC IV 72 – PHI Greek Inscriptions . With NO HINTS of long vowels (no etas and omegas, the original doesn’t have them), and no accents. I’ll give you spaces between words.

αἰ δε κα πονει δολοσαθθαι, ὀμοσαι τον ἐλοντα το πεντεκονταστατερο και πλιονος πεντον αὐτον ϝιν αὐτοι ϝεκαστον ἐπαριομενον, το δ’ ἀπεταιρο τριτον αὐτον, το δε ϝοικεος τον πασταν ἀτερον αὐτον μοικιοντ’ ἐλεν, δολοσαθθαι δε με.

I’m sure you’re making out some words…


EDIT Joachim Pense Dimitra Triantafyllidou Philip Newton

αἰ δε κα πονει δολοσαθθαι, ὀμοσαι τον ἐλοντα το πεντεκονταστατερο και πλιονος πεντον αὐτον ϝιν αὐτοι ϝεκαστον ἐπαριομενον, το δ’ ἀπεταιρο τριτον αὐτον, το δε ϝοικεος τον πασταν ἀτερον αὐτον μοικιοντ’ ἐλεν, δολοσαθθαι δε με.

Putting in omegas and etas AND chis and phis:

αἰ δέ κα φωνῆι δολώσαθθαι, ὀμόσαι τὸν ἐλόντα τῶ πεντηκονταστατήρω καὶ πλίονος πέντον αὐτὸν ϝὶν αὐτῶι ϝέκαστον ἐπαριόμενον, τῶ δ’ ἀπεταίρω τρίτον αὐτὸν, τῶ δὲ ϝοικέος τὸν πάσταν ἄτερον αὐτὸν μοιχίοντ’ ἐλέν, δολώσαθθαι δὲ μή.

Attic equivalent:

εἰ δ’ ἂν φωνῇ δολώσασθαι, ὀμόσαι τὸν ἐλόντα το­ῦ πεντηκονταστατήρου καὶ πλείονος, πέμπτον αὐτόν, αὐτὸν αὐτῷ ἔκαστον ἐπαρώμενον, το­ῦ δὲ μετοίκου τρίτον αὐτὸν, τοῦ δὲ οἰκέτου τὸν δεσπότη ἕτερον αὐτὸν μοιχοῦντ’ ἐλεῖν, δολώσασθαι δὲ μή.

but if anyone should declare that he has been taken by subterfuge, the captor is to swear, in a case involving fifty staters or more, with four others, each calling down solemn curses upon himself, and in the case of an apetairos [resident alien] with two others, and in the case of a serf the master and one other, that he took him in adultery and not by subterfuge.


EDIT: Mohammad Yamini. Ah, I too have just noticed the actual inscription. I will transcribe it, seeing as how I can’t find it online. There’s a couple of words I don’t understand; I’ve put question marks for them.

Μενέδημος Ἀπολλοδότῳ καὶ Λαοδικέῳ τοῖς ἄρχουσι καὶ τῇ πόλει χαίρειν. Το­ῦ γραφέντος πρὸς ἡμᾶς προστάγματος [ ] βασιλέως ὑποτέτακται [] τάφον κατακολουθεῖτε οὖν τοῖς ἐπεσταλμένοις καὶ φροντίσατε ὅπως ἀναγραφὲν τὸ πρόσταγμα εἰς στήλην διοινὴν (?) ἀνατεθῇ ἐν τῷ ἐπιφανεστάτῳ τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἱερῶν.

Ἔρρωσθε οιρ. Πανήμου.

Βασιλεὺς Ἀντίοχος Μενεδήμῳ χαίρειν. [ ]μενοι τῆς ἀδελφῆς βασιλίσσης Λαοδίκης τὰς τιμὰς ἐπὶ πλεῖον αὔξειν καὶ τοῦτο ἀναγκαιότατον ἑαυτοῖς νομίζοντες εἶναι διὰ τὸ μὴ μένον (?) ἡμῖν φιλοστόργως καὶ κηδεμονικῶς

Menedemus to Apollodotus and Laodiceus, the leaders, and to the city: greetings! Of the command written to us … has submitted to the king … tomb, so follow what has been written to you, and take care that the command be put up in an inscription in a (?) column in the most prominent of the temples in the city.

Hail. (?) of Panemus.

King Antiochus to Menedemus: greetings! []ing to increase the honours of our sister queen Laodice, and considering to ourselves that this is most necessary, not only so that we caringly and as a guardian…

Thank God I found a transcription of the same decree at this point, though written to another destination:

A X O N

Yeah, we can read it. I’ll excuse myself from transcribing and translating the rest, and will let you do Google translate on the Italian translation instead.

I woiuld not have worked out οιρ: it’s θιρ, which is the Year 119 of the Seleucid empire (193 BC), only normally it would be ριθ.

What is the etymology of Gylippus? It has to do with horses, but what else?

By: | Post date: 2016-09-28 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

Γύλιππος (Gýllipos) in Gerhard Köbler’s site is all I get, and all it says is “origin unclear”.

It does indeed look like a compound of gyl– and hippos “horse”. There is no gyl– word in attested Greek. There are the diminutives gyl-arion and gyl-iskos referring to kinds of fish; and there is the noun gylios, referring to a long-shaped satchel (Aristophanes), or to a hedgehog. Aristophanes also has the word gyliauchēngylios-necked”, meaning “long-necked, scraggy-necked”. gyliippos > gylippos could possibly be a “gylios-necked horse”, or someone associated with them.

Why does “Chinaman” carry a negative, denigrating connotation, while “Englishman” does not?

By: | Post date: 2016-09-27 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

Thanks to posters, and in particular those I agree with 🙂 — Lee Ballentine, Sng Kok Joon Leonard.

Some answers brought up how the word was coined, so I went to the Oxford English Dictionary. As it turns out, the entry for Chinaman has not been updated yet, and Google Books was if anything more informative.

Of the words for “inhabitant of China”, Chinese has been in use since the 17th century (with the plural Chineses). Chinese is an Italian word, and Italian missionaries were the most prominent Europeans to have had early contact with China.

Chinaman shows up in the 18th century. The first meaning attested in the OED is “someone who sells china, i.e. porcelain”; the earliest instance I can see is from 1746: The gentleman’s magazine. The word used with reference to Chinese people first shows up in Google Books in a history of the English East India Company, from 1759: An Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time.

(Oh, Lee Ballentine? “Chinaman’s chance” shows up in OED too. “Colloquial, now derogatory”.)

Sng Kok Joon Leonard suspects that Chinaman is simply a calque into English of the Chinese Zhongguo ren. It could be, either as mocking of Chinese grammar (as some posters suspect), or as simply a more English-like name than the Romance Chinese. (Cf. Frenchman, Dutchman; *Chin-ese-man combines two suffixes, so it wouldn’t work.) My own suspicion is that once chinaman was coined referring to porcelain-salesmen, the transfer to inhabitants of China would have been irresistible anyway.

At any rate, yes, the early usages of Chinaman were written by English colonialists and orientalists, in the lead up to or during the 100 years of humiliation. But I don’t buy it that they were meant to be derogatory. The next instance is in a 1779 Malabar–English dictionary: A Dictionary of the English and Malabar Languages; I don’t see why you would bother to be derogatory in that context.

The 1872 instance, which is the first the OED cites, is if anything trying to show an empathetic picture of China: The Foreigner in Far Cathay. As the modern blurb puts it, “The author is determined to give a picture of the country and its inhabitants that is realistic and free of the tired clichés often found in contemporary Western accounts of the country. […] Concerned that the West should show China the respect it deserves, he attempts especially to capture the essence of the Chinese character.”

The book mostly uses Chinese, but occasionally uses Chinaman. The instance OED quotes is:

It has been observed that drunkenness is not a Chinese failing: on the contrary, I am happy to be able to bear witness that John Chinaman is a most temperate creature.

Sounds condescending? Are you sure? Creature does not mean beast, after all. And why is he calling his exemplar “John Chinaman”? Because he’s invoking John Bull. He’s giving Mr Average Chinese the same name he’d give Mr Average Briton. That may be patronising, but it is not vituperative.

Like others said: Chinaman was not born a racist name. Chinaman became a racist name, because it picked up those connotations in the West, particularly with Australian and American panic over Chinese migration. And Chinaman was susceptible to picking up those connotations, because it was a newer, less common, and likely more colloquial word than Chinese.

It picked up the racism of its speakers; like any word might have. It’s irredeemable now.

It makes me think of the closest equivalent word in Greek. The Modern Greek word for Turkish woman is turkala. It sounds derogatory to me. But it sounds derogatory because Greeks have traditionally hated Turks, and it’s grammatically odd (the only instance of that suffix in the language). And there is no good word to replace it, unlike Chinaman and Chinese (turkissa is outnumbered by turkala 100:1; tourkida remains a hypothetical form). People on forums online wonder what form they should use instead of turkala. But as they get more friendly and familiar with Turks (including Turkish women), I suspect, the derogatory tone of turkala will likely just go away.

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