tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40739257011897794432023-11-15T23:08:43.351-08:00Dead Tongues WhisperingThe echoes of languages dead and ancient can still be heard, be they Hebrew, Hittite, Latin or Ugaritic. Ola Wikander muses and looks at these relics of human thought and communication and their modern day remnants: the human species has enjoyed the privilige of writing for over 5000 years, which makes living in the present seem a bit short sighted.Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-46674826427983304422011-03-28T11:40:00.001-07:002013-10-27T03:43:32.913-07:00Drought, Death and the SunAnd, for those who might find it interesting, an English summary of my PhD project, which I did at Lund University and published locally in 2012 - a revised, "international" version will be published in early 2014:<br />
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I study how drought is used as a symbol of death in the Old Testament and how these images relate to similar conceptions in the Canaanite texts from Ugarit (c. 14th century BC). I examine how the burning sun (represented in the form of the Ugaritic sun goddess Shapshu - also known as Shapsh or Shapash) is presented as the cause of drought and as a tool of the god of death, and I look at how these literary and linguistic expressions are inherited from a common North West Semitic background.<br />
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The thesis deals with the relationship between the Israelite religious texts we know as the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible and the closely related, but older cuneiform texts from Ugarit in modern Syria, texts that amongst other things describe how the god Baal fight his enemies Yamm ("Sea") and Mot ("Death"). The dominion of the god of death is often described in terms of the burning drought that prevents fertility. I begin with a detailed philological analysis of how this drought and its effect on the sun (Shapshu) is presented in the Ugaritic material, and then I examine how this death/drought-motif recurs in many places in the Old Testament, such as the story of Elijah on Carmel (1 Kgs 17-18), at the end of the book of Malachi, in the books of Hosea and Joel and in other places. The concept of drought as a reflection of the power of death is transformed as Israelite monotheism emerges, and I study how this initially hostile power step by step becomes a part of Yahweh's own retinue.<br />
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The basic questions are:<br />
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1) How do the concepts of drought, death and the sun relate to each other in the Ugaritic religious literature; how are these concepts used as metaphors to express basic tenets of Ugaritic myth and theology?<br />
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2) How are these concepts and their uses reflected in the literature and religion of Ancient Israel? How can the identification of these ancient reminiscences of a shared North West Semitic religious background help shed light on the interpretation of various passages in the Biblical text and on the relationship between the Old Testament and that of the surrounding North West Semitic culture?Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-67563292245572178832010-08-07T12:39:00.000-07:002010-08-07T12:59:33.105-07:00SehetepibreI really like the Egyptian royal name <span style="font-style:italic;">sḥtp-jb-rʿ</span> (today often read as "Sehetepibre", although it was hardly pronounced that way in antiquity). The name belonged to the royal titulary of King Amenemhat I. The first word (<span style="font-style:italic;">sḥtp</span>) is a causative formation rom the verbal root <span style="font-style:italic;">ḥtp</span>(as in all those names ending in "hotep"), meaning "to be satisfied, be happy", which leads to the conclusion that that the causative <span style="font-style:italic;">sḥtp </span>means "to make happy" or "the one who makes satisfied" . Ancient Egyptian shares the causative prefix <span style="font-style:italic;">s </span> with a number of the Semitic languages (of which it is a distant relation), such as Ugaritic and Akkadian, which both have <span style="font-style:italic;">š-</span>. This is an example of the common Afro-Asiatic background of Egyptian and the Semitic languages.<br /><br />The word <span style="font-style:italic;">jb </span>(which probably was pronounced <span style="font-style:italic;">jib</span>) means "heart", and is thought to be related to Hebrew and Akkadian <span style="font-style:italic;">libbu </span>/<span style="font-style:italic;">lev </span>(which both mean "heart").<br /><br />Finally, we have the word <span style="font-style:italic;">rʿw</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">rʿ</span>, ie. "Sun" or "the sun god Re". In the older stages of Egyptian the words were probably pronounced <span style="font-style:italic;">riʿuw</span> or similar, and later <span style="font-style:italic;">reʿa</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">reʿə</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">riʿə</span>, and finally in Coptic as <span style="font-style:italic;">rê</span>, the pronunciation of the word we often use colloquially today when speaking of the Egyptian god of the sun. A reconstruction of the proto-Egyptian pronunciation of the word was proposed by F. Kamerzell 1991: *<span style="font-style:italic;">Lidaw</span> (<span style="font-style:italic;">l</span> being an older pronunciation of the Egyptian <span style="font-style:italic;">r</span> - and it is known today that the Egyptian <a href="http://necrolinguist.blogspot.com/2009/03/ayin-sound-of-thunder.html">ʿAyin-sound</a> often has its eymological backgound in a <span style="font-style:italic;">*d</span>). In an article from 1997, Thomas Schneider proposed that the word may etymologically be related to the Arabic verb <span style="font-style:italic;">ladhaʿa</span> ("to burn").<br /><br />Summed up, the name means "He who makes the heart of Re satisfied". Rather poetic, don't you think?Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-80727467787148558462010-08-04T16:01:00.000-07:002010-08-04T16:03:45.431-07:00FacilographyThis is probably the best book title I have ever heard - and no, this is not made up, the book in question really does exist. Really:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />Facilography, or, A system of easy, expeditious writing : entirely new, applicable to all languages, ancient and modern, in characters completely adapted to conciseness and currency in combination, expressing every word without the omission of a single letter, in half the space and in one third the time required for common running hand, comprised and rendered attainable in six lessons, calculated to facilitate the accounts, correspondence and memorandums of the merchant and man of business, where both accuracy and dispatch are indispensibly requisite, and to expedite the preparations in manuscript, and other exertions of the man of letters. : To which is added, an appendix, shewing by an easy and comprehensive method, how the same is applicable as a universal system of stenography, fully demonstrating the most superior elegance, lineality, legibility, and dispatch, in rules peculiarly and admirably suited, to free from every ambiguity this important science, to professional gentlemen, students at law, divinity, &c. to reporters and every person in the habit of making notes for memorandums or business, this stenography will be found highly deserving of preference for its complete adaptation to follow the most rapid speaker. The whole treatise as a system of expeditious and short writing, combining information not to be found in any other work now extant. Illustrated by numerous examples, on nine elegantly engraved copperplates. Dedicated to the Honourable Sir William Garrow, His Majesty's Attorney General</span> / by Thomas Oxley, author of several fugitive pieces, essays, &c. moral and philosophical; and Master of a mathematical and commercial academy. 1816.<br /><br />You just have to love it, don't you?Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-6034688334778702722010-01-05T18:28:00.001-08:002010-01-05T18:28:51.157-08:00In pressFor those interested in my <a href="http://necrolinguist.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-love-hebrew-consecutive-tenses.html">earlier</a> <a href="http://necrolinguist.blogspot.com/2009/02/hebrew-consecutives-part-2.html">posts</a> on the Hebrew consecutive forms, I would just like to mention that the coming issue of <a href="http://www.brill.nl/vt">Vetus Testamentum</a> will include an article by yours truly on these very forms, based on a typological comparison with the Indo-European augment. I am also currently finishing the editing of a short note accepted for publication in <a href="http://www.degruyter.de/journals/zaw/detailEn.cfm">ZAW </a>on Job 3:8 and those funny Leviathanic sorcerers. The road goes ever on ...Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-63435518064888928362009-09-20T05:12:00.000-07:002009-10-12T05:55:01.611-07:00I, the Elamite!Elamite, the mother tongue of Elam (in modern Iran) was a language that really did its own thing. It was not related to the Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic language families, or even to Sumerian - the only somewhat plausible suggestion is to connect it with the Dravidian languages of India (such as Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, etc.), but even that possibility is highly uncertain - a bit dubious even. <br /><br />One of the things making Elamite such an odd language is the fact that its nouns were inflected according to grammatical person, so that you get special forms for "I, the King," "you, the king" or "he, the king ". This is not a case of possessive suffixes but of endings showing the identity of the word itself. The Elamite word for "king" was <span style="font-style:italic;">sunki</span>, but when the king was speaking of himself it was inflected <span style="font-style:italic;">sunkik</span> (something like "the king, i.e. me"). The "second person" of "king" was <span style="font-style:italic;">sunkit </span> and the third was <span style="font-style:italic;">sunkir</span>.<br /><br />The terms most often used to describe these strange forms are locutive, allocutive and delocutive. The suffix <span style="font-style:italic;">-me</span> may be used to create abstract nouns: <span style="font-style:italic;">sunkime </span>is thus "kingdom". <br /><br />This tendency to inflect nouns according to person is extremely rare. A similar system is supposed to exist in the Khoisan language Nama, but apart from that I think it is rather unique ...Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-10059953729819328502009-05-03T13:20:00.000-07:002009-05-03T13:28:38.867-07:00Let's let's!One of the best manga names I have ever heard is <span style="font-style:italic;">Let's Bible</span>, yet another example of the common "engrish" tendency <a href="http://www.engrish.com/2007/05/lets-fun/">to put "let's" in front of everything</a>. The fact that the comic is about an angel and a fisherman in Croatia (whose greatest interests are fashion and sex) just makes it even better!Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-39690299667743859152009-04-19T16:24:00.000-07:002009-04-26T17:06:20.507-07:00Neo-Sanskrit<span style="font-style:italic;">Asato mâ sad gamaya<br />Tamaso mâ jyotir gamaya<br />Mrtyor mâmrtam gamaya</span><br /><br /><br />"Lead me from the false to the true!<br />Lead me from darkness to light!<br />Lead me from death to the immortal!"<br /><br />The words are from the Brhadaranyaka-upanishad (perhaps about 800 BC), and describe the salvific experience of immortality in the most vivid terms. Note the old Indo-Euroepan words <span style="font-style:italic;">sat</span>, "true", originally a participle of the same root that gives English "is", the root <span style="font-style:italic;">mr</span>-, which we find in Latin <span style="font-style:italic;">mors</span> (and in the latinate loanword "mortal"). The word <span style="font-style:italic;">gamaya </span>("lead") is a causative of the same root (*<span style="font-style:italic;">gwem-</span>) that we have have in the word "come", which means that the text literally says "let me come."<br /><br />And where do we find this text today, apart from the dusty tomes and recitations of philologers and brahmins? In the majestic choral piece called <span style="font-style:italic;">Neodämmerung </span>, which is played in the movie <span style="font-style:italic;">The Matrix Revolutions</span>, when Neo is fighting with the ever-so-cool Agent Smith. The word-stress is not quite right in the movie, however (the chorus puts the emphasis on second syllable in <span style="font-style:italic;">gamaya </span>, which should ideally be short). But it is nonetheless quite fun to find Upanishadic Sanskrit in a big Hollywood movie - who said ancient languages can't help you understand modern life?Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-73284133772991794222009-03-27T17:07:00.000-07:002009-04-26T17:07:20.979-07:00Kabbalistic dyslexiaDefining one's own distinctive character through spelling of names and suchlike is something that occurs quite often, but one especially interesting phenomenon occurs when this method is used to separate religious traditions from each other. This is well exemplified by the word which in English is usually spelled Kabbalah, i.e. Jewish mysticism. The word itself is derived from the Hebrew verb <span style="font-style:italic;">qibbel</span>, "to recieve", and means "tradition". As I'm sure many of you know, Kabbalah today extends far beyond Judaism (Madonna is one of the more humorous examples of this), a process that began during the Renaissance, when thinkers such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin became interested in Kabbalah and created a Christian variant. In later Western esotericism (even non-Christian and non-Jewish) it has had quite a central position (in particular the symbolism surrounding the <span style="font-style:italic;">'Etz Chayim</span>, the tree of life). <br /><br />The funny thing is that the various "transformations" of the concept have recived different spellings of the word itself in Western languages. The original, Jewish variant tends to be rendered "Kabbalah", while the more Christianized version is often given the name "Cabala". The occult version is often called "qabala" (a spelling which was popularized by The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn around the end of 19th century and the early 1900s). These variant spellings have almost become ideological markers to some modern practicioners, and some people have gone so far as to encourage this confusion of spellings in order to make an ideological point. A bit funny, that.<br /><br />It is especially interesting, and somewhat ironic, to note these variations in spelling, as Kabbalah traditionally puts extreme emphasis on the exact letters used to spell a word (in order to make the letter mysticism and numerology work) ...<br /><br />The Golden Dawn use of (and often peculiar pronunciation of) the Hebrew language is a topic I am thinking of doing a future article on. It would be a nice thing to do if I can find the time. Modern Western Hebrew and quasi-Hebrew has its peculiar charm... though I really don't want to think about how Madonna pronounces it!Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-18057235000856275022009-03-27T12:22:00.000-07:002009-07-04T16:05:42.504-07:00'Ayin, the sound of thunderOne of the most characteristic sounds of the Semitic languages (and probably the one most non-Semitic-speaking people find the hardest to pronounce) is <span style="font-style:italic;">'ayin</span> (or <span style="font-style:italic;">'Ayn</span> as it is called in Arabic). To some of those whose native language belongs to other linguistic families (like Indo-European, for example) it sounds almost like some kind of vomiting or nausea, but I happen to be one of those who really think it is beautiful and pleasant to listen to. Thus, I feel called upon to provide a small tutorial on how to pronounce this sound, which is phonetically classified as a voiced pharyngeal fricative (or sometimes a pharyngealized glottal stop)—as a simple service to non-semitist mankind: <br /><br />1) constrict the muscles as far down in the throat as you can. <br />2) produce an <span style="font-style:italic;">ah</span>-sound, as deep and gargly as you possibly can, almost like when the doctor examines your throat with one of those funny little tongue depressor-thingies.<br />3) Feel how your whole body vibrates when you make the extraordinary sound.<br /><br />Hey presto! Now you can pronounce beautiful words such as <span style="font-style:italic;">mu'allim</span> ( "teacher" in Arabic), and enunciate the name of the country Iraq as it was meant to: 'irâq, with an audible 'ayn at the beginning. And don't forget<span style="font-style:italic;"> ra'am</span> ( "thunder" in Hebrew, in the classical pronunciation). Particularly note how the 'ayn-sound makes the Hebrew word vibrate and almost sound like the sonic shockwave created by lightning: RA'AM!<br /><br />Beauty in its most unadulterated form. Call me crazy, but that's what I think it is. I spent many years of my adolescence trying to learn to produce this sound correctly: I suppose a lot of people thought I was somewhat demented, but hey: it worked!Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-39513997578639152262009-02-20T08:05:00.000-08:002009-05-30T08:41:26.071-07:00Hebrew Consecutives, part 2In <a href="http://necrolinguist.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-love-hebrew-consecutive-tenses.html">the previous post</a> I described the weird phenomenon of the so called consecutive tenses of Classical Hebrew - the strange fact that the word for "and" seems to make the two Hebrew quasi-tenses switch meaning with each other. At the end of that post I promised a historical explanation for this somewhat outlandish state of affairs, and one does not like to disappoint, so here goes.<br /><br />In the linguistic stages before Classical Hebrew, the verbal system was somewhat different. We know this from older North West Semitic languages, most notably Ugaritic, which was spoken and written in modern day Syria during the latter half of the second millennium BC.<br /><br />At this earlier time, the verbal system in North West Semitic (of which Hebrew is a part) seems to have looked something like the following. There were two tenses which expressed true verbal actions, both of them created using prefixes (and some suffixes). If one uses the standard example verb <span style="font-style:italic;">q-t-l</span> (meaning "to kill" - that's a weird piece of grammatical morbidity for you), we get the forms <em>yaqtul </em>and <em>yaqtulu </em>in the 3rd person singular masculine. These two forms differed somewhat in meaning: the longer form <em>yaqtulu </em>seems to have been used for actions of duration, for present and future actions. The shorter one, <span style="font-style:italic;">yaqtul</span>, was used for narrative purposes, for the past, but also for exhortations and orders.<br /><br />There was also a suffix form, <em>qatala</em>, which originally had stative meaning (it marked a state rather than an action). After a while it also started to be used for actions, often (but not always) in the past, actions which were known to be true with high cerntainty, background facts, etc.<br /><br />Then came a great reorganization of the system. The final vowels of Hebrew were dropped, so that the two prefix forms fell together: <em>yaqtul </em>and <em>yaqtulu </em>both fell together as <span style="font-style:italic;">yiqtol</span>, the form mostly called "imperfect" in Hebrew grammar. The difference between present-future and past form became obscured in most (but not all) verbs. And the <em>qatala </em>form was increasingly used for past time in the form <em>qatal</em>, often called "perfect". Later on this temporal separation became full fledged, which led to the fact that the imperfect and perfect forms are usually regarded as "future" and "past" in the grammar of Modern Hebrew.<br /><br />But in the classical language, the old narrative <span style="font-style:italic;">yaqtul</span>-form lingered on. It remained as an old and fossilized relic - but normally only in one single environment: when preceded by the word for "and" (<span style="font-style:italic;">we-</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">wa-</span>). This gave rise to the <span style="font-style:italic;">wayyiqtol </span>form, the most common form of classical Hebrew narrative. A form of the "impefect" (present/future) was suddenly used for past time. It must have seemed strange indeed to the mediaeval Jewish scholars for whom this form was nothing but an old weirdness.<br /><br />The reason for the perfect getting a "switch" of its own from past to future was completely different. That came to pass because of the original use of the perfect form: talking about certainties, emphatic utterances and states. This usage meant that the perfect often occurred in the second half of "if-then" type clauses (oy! I'm sounding like a programmer here!). The certain result of a condition would stand in the perfect form, often preceded by <span style="font-style:italic;">we</span>-. which provided sequence. This usage can be found in Ugaritic, as well as in the letters from Bronze Age El Amarna. But again, this surviving construction appeared to be completely "backwards" to traditional Hebrew grammar. Perfect for the future? Weird.<br /><br />And so both "tenses" had seemingly been switched. But that was never what really happened; it only seemed that way to those for whom the system was no longer living.Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-18434313448492067852009-02-10T03:37:00.000-08:002009-02-10T04:01:51.728-08:00Hebrew Consecutives, part 1I love the Hebrew consecutive tenses. For those who have not studied Classical Hebrew, the subject might need something of an introduction (and <em>nota bene</em>, Classical Hebrew: the consecutive forms disappear in the Post-Biblical language).<br /><br />The basic idea is the following. Hebrew has two main verbal forms, often known as "tenses" (although that designation is really a bit off, as the forms weren't originally purely temporal, but rather aspectual - sort of). These two creatures are often called "perfect" and "imperfect". The "perfect" often (but not always) signifies past time, and the imperfect often (but not always) signifies present or future. So far so good.<br /><br />Now comes the fun part. When preceded by the little word <em>we</em>- (or <em>wa</em>-), meaning "and", the "tenses" seemingly switch meanings with each other. These are the "consecutive" tenses, and they seem downright bizarre to the beginner. Past becomes future and future becomes past just by putting "and" in front of the word.<br /><br />An example: the imperfect <em>yishmor </em>means "he will guard", but <em>wayyishmor </em>means "and he guarded".<br />The perfect <em>shamar </em>means "he guarded", but <em>weshamar </em>means "and he will guard."<br /><br />Weird, huh? The perfect seems to take on the meaning of the imperfect, and vice versa. How can this be? Were the ancient Israelites just crazy? No, of course not. There is a nice historical reason for all this, which will follow in the next blog post.<br /><br />As an aside, good old Gershom Scholem (the Kabbalah scholar of great renown) once wrote that the consecutive perfect (the "past" form which is switched to future meaning) specifically refers to the Messianic age. Grammar has become theology - in a rather weird way. Stay tuned for part two.Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-36326909434084605542009-01-22T11:46:00.000-08:002009-01-23T15:34:02.998-08:00Chamesh, pente, quinque, fimf, penkwe etc.<a href="http://www.brave-new-words.blogspot.com/">BJ Epstein</a> tagged me with the following internet meme; I don't do them often, so it might be a fun excercise. The basic idea is to write five answers to every question. Here I go.<br /><br />What were you doing five years ago (December 2003)?<br /><br />1) I was a student at that time - I suppose I was doing some Hebrew course or other. And assorted other academic stuff. <br />2 I was working on my <span style="font-style:italic;">Enuma Elish</span>-translation and chiseling out the structure of my book <span style="font-style:italic;">Dead Languages' Society</span>, which was eventually published in 2006.<br />3) I was writing an (unpublished) fantasy novel together with a friend.<br />4) I think I had just moved into my first honest-to-God apartment at that point, but I'm not 100% sure about the timing...<br />5) I had just come into contact with one of my childhood idols, Swedish role-playing-writer-turned-novelist Erik Granström.<br /><br />What were five things on your list for today?<br /><br />1. Giving a lecture to my Biblical Hebrew class (on nominal phrases, to be specific).<br />2. Trying to get rid of this awful flu which has crippled me for the last week.<br />3. Helping <a href="http://dameboudicca.blogspot.com/">my girlfriend</a> - who is currently stricken by pneumonia (!) - with a number of chores.<br />4. Printing out materials for my seminar on monday (three pieces from the dissertation, to be exact), and getting them to a colleague and friend of mine.<br />5. Answer a number of e-mails and other net-related stuff (like this one!)<br /><br />What are five snacks you enjoy?<br /><br />1. Light chocolate.<br />2. German Strudel (can you believe it?).<br />3. Bananas, in near-suicidal quantities.<br />4. Vegetarian futomaki-rolls.<br />5. Clementines - even more of those than of bananas. And cold, almost freezing. Yessss...<br /><br />What are five things you'd do if you were a billionaire?<br /><br />1. Donating to certain political causes I find important.<br />2. Giving to some more general "charity"-type causes, duly considering their political slant.<br />3. Making sure the people close to me could live comfortable lives and pursue their ambitions.<br />3. Possibly buying a nice, semi-large apartment with lots of library space.<br />4. Buying enormous amounts of books and video games.<br />5. Instituting some kind of prize fund for classical humanities research.<br /><br />What are five jobs you've had?<br /><br />1. Writer.<br />2. Translator from various ancient languages (not permanently hired as such, but still - doing the work and getting paid for it).<br />3. Doctoral candidate in Old Testament Studies, including teaching of Biblical Hebrew.<br />(numbers 1-3 are still operational, by the way, and those, I'm afraid, are the lot. Not even a summer temp job to show.)<br /><br />Who are five people you want to tag?<br />DameBoudicca<br />Venanzio<br />Dysorderly<br /><br /><br />Three will have to do ;-)Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-33275832167662848992008-12-12T10:32:00.000-08:002009-03-27T12:50:53.864-07:00Wikati, wikati, do you hear?The Ancient Greek language consisted of a number of rather different dialects. The most famous of these is Attic, the classical language of 5th century Athens. This is the dialect most often taught to beginners in Classical Greek. Other dialects were Ionic (of which Attic is sometimes seen as a sub-form), which was spoken in western Asia Minor and was the language of writers such as Herodotus. Aeolic was used by Sappho. And then there was Koine, the post-Alexander the Great concoction of Attic and Ionic which became the language of the whole eastern Mediterranean during Hellenistic times and was the language of the New Testament. From this mix derive both spoken Byzantine Greek and the Demotic Greek spoken and written in Greece today.<br /><br />But there was Doric, too. This dialect (which in many respects is the most conservative of them all) was spoken in the Peloponnese as well as in Crete and Rhodes and Sicily. To an indo-europeanist, Doric Greek is like a piece of art. It keeps the long <em>ā</em>:s and doesn't turn them to <em>ē</em>:s like Attic and Ionic and it preserves the sequence <em>ti</em>, which Attic turns into <em>si</em>. This means that the word <em>phēsi </em>("s/he says") is <em>phāti </em>in Doric. It somehow feels more real and proper, I think. Powerful, even ;-)<br /><br />Certain forms of Doric even keep the old Indo-European <em>w</em>-sound, which is lost in Attic and Ionic. We see it in such wonderful words as <em>woikos </em>("house", cf. Latin <em>vicus</em>, "village"), and <em>wikati </em>("twenty", cf. Latin <em>viginti </em>and Sanskrit <em>vimśati</em>). The latter sounds ever so much more real and true than the flattened-out Attic equivalent <em>eikosi</em>, don't you think?<br /><br />As stated above, the Modern Greek language derives from the Attic/Ionic Koine language. The standard language, that is. There is one other strange remnant of the ancient dialectal diversity. This is Tsakonian, spoken to this day by a dwindling number of people in the Peloponnese. This language, which differs rather a lot from "normal" Modern Greek, seems to be a direct descendant of the Doric dialect. It is very changed and grammatically simplified, to be sure, but it retains many of the old characteristics which I so love. For example:<br /><br />Tsakonian often has <em>a </em>where Standard Modern Greek has <em>i </em>(from the old <em>ē</em>). Thus Tsakonian has <em>amera </em>for "day" where Standard has <em>imera</em>.<br /><br />It has an <em>u</em>-sound for the old short <em>u</em>, which in Doric never shifted to <em>y </em>as in Attic.<br /><br />Aaaand:<br />it sometimes even keeps the old <em>w</em>, now transformed into a <em>v</em>.<br /><br />And here goes; the Lords Prayer in Tsakonian:<br /><br />Ἀφένγα νάμου π' ἔσσι στὸν οὐρανέ. <br />Νὰ ἔννι ἁγιαστὲ τθὸ ὀνουμάντι, <br />νὰ μόλῃ ἁ βασιλειάντι, <br />νὰ ναθῇ τθὸ θελημάντι, σὰν τὸν οὐρανὲ, ἔζρου τσὲ τὰν ἰγῇ. <br />Τὸν ἄνθε τὸν ἐπιούσιον δί νάμου νί σάμερε, <br />τσὲ ἄφε νάμου τθὰ χρίε νάμου <br />καθοὺ τσὲ ἐνὺ ἐμμαφῖντε τοῦ χρεουφελῖτε νάμου, <br />τσὲ μὴ νὰ φερίτζερε ἐμούνανε 'σ' τζειρασμὸν, <br />ἀλλὰ ἐλευθέρου νάμου ἀπὸ τὸ κακόν.Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-29151356688855684692008-12-10T14:00:00.000-08:002008-12-12T09:09:34.190-08:00Wallander speaking SwenglishI watched the first episode of the British-produced Inspector Wallander series a couple of days ago - hailing from southern Sweden myself, it would have been something of a sacrilege not to throw a glance at this televised transformation of Swedish dejection and gloom gone pop culture. I once read three of the Wallander novels (by Henning Mankell, one of Sweden's most economically successful literary exports) and wasn't all that impressed. I must say, however, that I thoroughly enjoyed Kenneth Brannagh's take on the Swedish sleuth - especially, I loved the almost romanticising Scanian landscape-views that filled the screen, with trees, skies, seas and rape-fields (a word which in English creates an unintentional and - given the story - very fitting and morbid pun).<br /><br />All of the show seemed very Swedish - the furniture even. But of course, the actors were very British, and so were their gestures and looks. And they spoke English. Which is weird.<br /><br />I know - the movie version of <span style="font-style:italic;">Gorky Park</span> is in English, as are the Italian parts of <span style="font-style:italic;">Hannibal</span> (sadly). And I suppose we're all tired to death of WWII-movies wiz gerrmans speeeeeaking English instedt of Deutsch ("Ja, myne Fewrer" etc.). But English it was. Are subtitles that hard?<br /><br />Well, one adjusted, and after a while it wasn't even strange to hear rural Scanians speaking cockney (or RP, for that matter). But the names!! When Mr. Jackson did his Lord of the Rings he hired language coaches to get the Elvish right - for the sake of the purists. Couldn't Branagh & Co get someone to teach them to at least stress the Swedish names correctly? It's pronounced Vallánder, not Wollender, for Supreme Being's sake! And Svedin is Svedéen, not Svédin. But I guess even I have to accept the difficulty in pronouncing the surname Nyberg, which in actual Swedish has not only a) the vowel "y", sort of like French "u" in "lune", and b) the <span style="font-style:italic;">auslaut</span> -rg (sounding like "ry", sort of) but also the Swedish tonal grave accent, which would sound bizarre in an English piece of prosody.<br /><br />But the others - I mean: Vallánder! How hard can it be?<br /><br />And yes, I'm a purist. But languages are my thing, and I'm Swedish, so I have the right ;-)Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-24373233920928526422008-10-19T13:32:00.001-07:002008-12-10T15:59:07.978-08:00The Etruscans in PersonThe Etruscan language (spoken in antiquity in central Italy) is a strange beast. It is seemingly quite unrelated to any of the language families of the ancient world - its only known relatives are the very scantily attested Lemnian and Rhaetic: Lemnian is preserved to us in one (1) single inscription. Etruscan, however, is attested in over 9000 inscriptions, but most of these are extremely short. Only a handful of the Etruscan texts exceed 25 words, which has of course somewhat hampered the modern interpretation. But this does not mean that Etruscan is a "complete mystery": substantial portions of the language have been made quite understandable after over a century of systematic scholarship.<br /><br />The fact is that we can find a number of remnants of Etruscan in modern languages, even though it died out during the first century of the common era. Latin borrowed a few words from their Etruscan neighbours, and some of these have travelled on into English, German, French, Swedish and other modern languages. The most well-known of these (possibly) Etruscan words is "person".<br /><br />The Latin word <em>persona </em>originally means "theatre mask", from which the current meaning was extrapolated: our personalities can, after all be viewed as masks. There is an Etruscan word <em>phersu</em>, which seems to mean "theatre mask". This word was probably borrowed into Latin and thence into English, etc. So every time you talk about "persons", "personalities" or "personas" or "personal things", you might be inadvertently rehashing an old Etruscicism!Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4073925701189779443.post-52349004119600649022008-10-18T17:06:00.000-07:002008-10-19T05:24:44.725-07:00Proto-Indo-European TransformersRemnants of ancient languages do tend to crop up in the strangest places. A lot of these happen to be in the sphere of popular culture, a fact that seriously challenges the old worn-out idea that ancient languages are just that - old and worn-out, interesting only to small cliques of academics (or possibly to more fashionable, albeit somewhat bizarre, cliques of the more Donna Tart-esque variety).<br /><br />In fact, one can find references to <i>very</i> old linguistic items in the most popular of cultural outpourings, especially if the language happens to be English. There are many such examples, some of which I intend to discuss in this blog.<br /><br />One instance to begin with is something as "low-brow" as Transformers, that great main-stay of western eighties mythology. Look at the names of the big robots, and smile:<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXxMjZBX70F9cZqcWEClDRVAqPCIqiDbDiz3A4yK9gal_Clj15aIIx1d7zioen78OWaDs0n3LGGLtEYhKRjV8NDrR2waBFJxaDKWBcxvkDILtIozgcFXX3U2mD-G3ITBX1qqqV8RqNUGA/s1600-h/Optimus+Prime+g2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXxMjZBX70F9cZqcWEClDRVAqPCIqiDbDiz3A4yK9gal_Clj15aIIx1d7zioen78OWaDs0n3LGGLtEYhKRjV8NDrR2waBFJxaDKWBcxvkDILtIozgcFXX3U2mD-G3ITBX1qqqV8RqNUGA/s200/Optimus+Prime+g2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5258659996716096834" /></a><br />Optimus Prime: Latin through and through, from <em>optimus</em> ("best") and <em>primus</em> ("first"). Primus even happens to be the name of the Transformers "god" created by genius comic book writer Simon Furman.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCDwjIJ9_ZL4owbAVaMcrW56xUqwOTD8AAdmvP3VyL9bg1qVWnBY5HY3KtY_Ld2zIYJTmwAoESCQc9255POFXTnkzJnsP9qcUFho2TRUXHvmHOwr2usgFpozBI72h4Ibc7wyLNqepJmGY/s1600-h/Megatron.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCDwjIJ9_ZL4owbAVaMcrW56xUqwOTD8AAdmvP3VyL9bg1qVWnBY5HY3KtY_Ld2zIYJTmwAoESCQc9255POFXTnkzJnsP9qcUFho2TRUXHvmHOwr2usgFpozBI72h4Ibc7wyLNqepJmGY/s200/Megatron.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5258660173230447826" /></a><br />Megatron: The beginning of the name of this great bad guy is of course as classic as can be, reflecting the greek adjective <em>megas, megalê, mega</em> ("big, large, great"), itself an inheritance from the Proto-Indo-European adjective <em>*meĝh<sub>2</sub>-</em> (whose root is also reflected in words such as English "much", Swedish <em>mycket </em>, Gothic <em>mikils</em>, Sanskrit <em>mahi</em>, and Hittite <em>mekki-</em>).<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY3tNjFe9RHKkMQykp_zxJhe9Ucnim9_MXjpuzw3qLRlmExbNTaC0eM-onB2XlWLFp1CVC5hKhzA28ghMeh1zRRCwLvvDhsRYVdPFL2AA0tl7AENUbOmrTh5nWCdt77Tl9ADoOUz1dS7o/s1600-h/Fortess+Maximus.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY3tNjFe9RHKkMQykp_zxJhe9Ucnim9_MXjpuzw3qLRlmExbNTaC0eM-onB2XlWLFp1CVC5hKhzA28ghMeh1zRRCwLvvDhsRYVdPFL2AA0tl7AENUbOmrTh5nWCdt77Tl9ADoOUz1dS7o/s200/Fortess+Maximus.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5258660291176472626" /></a><br />Fortress Maximus: Here we find Latin <em>maximus</em> ("greatest"), again from Proto-Indo-European <em>*meĝh<sub>2</sub>-</em>.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo5-D2OZ_tKH31e_tOtMG9cXvbsaO7n_gbzfx3lNWh8l84m7au_GsBVda3twCZIpoR2lj6ld0fVC8N0FLkgMdQ_5DD9yHxmdCZ0F6O7-0G3r9MDQLFLtP2KcW-kz54klAb4_JU5G0n-w0/s1600-h/Autobot_symbol.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo5-D2OZ_tKH31e_tOtMG9cXvbsaO7n_gbzfx3lNWh8l84m7au_GsBVda3twCZIpoR2lj6ld0fVC8N0FLkgMdQ_5DD9yHxmdCZ0F6O7-0G3r9MDQLFLtP2KcW-kz54klAb4_JU5G0n-w0/s200/Autobot_symbol.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5258661239694415554" /></a><br />Even the word "Autobot" is of course of ancient origin: "auto-" from Greek <em>autos </em>("self", here from the word "automobile") and "-bot" from "robot", which is itself a loan from Czech, where the root means "work, labor". This Slavic word is from the Indo-European root <em>*h<sub>3</sub>erb<sup>h</sup>-</em>, which originally meant "join a different social group" (a meaning preserved in the Hittite verb <em>harp</em>-), whence the meaning "become a slave, become an unfree worker". The same root is reflected in German <em>Arbeit</em>.Ola Wikanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12830994442583711940noreply@blogger.com5