lethargic_man | Entries tagged with linguistics geekery

Here's something that's been missing from my blog so far: a linguistics geekery icon. It took me two evenings to put together, and was sufficiently interesting doing so that I think I'm going to blog about it here. [Now edited to add Mycenaean Greek.]

( Read more... )

"Five lines of ancient script on a shard of pottery could be the oldest example of Hebrew writing ever discovered, an archaeologist in Israel says," reports the BBC News site. "Preliminary investigations since the shard was found in July have deciphered some words, including judge, slave and king." It even provides a picture:

...which is fine for giving an impression to those who can't read Palaeo-Hebrew, and can't understand Hebrew, and is maddening to those of us who can! I've just spent the last five minutes googling other news sites, and can't find any better picture than this, which is just good enough to show that a letter aleph is being pointed to, and one or two other letters, but that's all.

How annoying!

(Of course, I'm sure if I but wait—possibly for proper publication—I will learn more.)

The guy working at the desk behind mine is an American, and asked us if we wanted to see what a USAn postal vote (or as he called it, absentee vote) looks like. The ballot itself and the instructions came marked in three languages. One was English, one Spanish; the third was not immediately obvious:

Enstriksyon Pou Votè Peyi Etranje Yo

(Instructions for Overseas Voters.) It looked like it might be Romance from that, but there wasn't enough there for me to be sure these weren't all words borrowed from another language, so I read on:

Li enstriksyon sa yo ak anpil atansyon anvan nou make bilten vòt lan.

(Read these instructions carefully before marking ballot.) The guys sitting around me thought it might be Portuguese, but it didn't look Portuguese, and I had a sneaky suspicion that it might be... But wait, first you have one more try:

Trè enpòtan. Pou asire w ke yo konte bilten vòt pou moun ki pap la w an, se pou w gen tan ranpli li epi voye li tounen bay Sipèvizè Eleksyon Miami-Dade lan le pli vit ke posib pa pi ta ke 7:00 p.m. (diswa) menm jou eleksyon an.

Have you got it yet? My suspicions were confirmed when I found the page entitled "Enstrikson—Kreyòl". It's Creole. Read it aloud and you'll see it's like phonetically spelled slangily pronounced French (with a lot of loanwords). I found it fascinating: I've never actually come across Creole beforehand.

My Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, and Collins Concise dictionary all merely list "bitumen" as having derived from Latin bitūmen. Rather to my surprise, I was able to get some more detail from Klein's Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (whilst looking up בֶּטוֹן beton, "concrete", which turns out to derive, via French, from this word):

L. bitūmen (= mineral pitch), an Osco-Umbrian loan word (the genuine Latin form form would have been *vetūmen, from *gwetūmen, of Celtic origin.

Cool, eh?

(Still doesn't tell me where *gwetūmen came from, though: it looks too long to simply be a single term meaning "bitumen, pitch". What do the individual parts of it mean?)

Following on from my previous post, consider the passage in the final paragraph of the Shema:

You shall look on [the fringe on your garment] and remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them, and not follow after the desires of your heart and eyes, which you [something] after. וּרְאִיתֶם אֹתוֹ וּזְכַרְתֶּם אֶת כָּל מִצוֹת יהוה וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם וְלֹא תָתוּרוּ אַחֲרֵי לְבַבְכֶם וְאַחֲרֵי עֵינֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר אַתֶּם זֹנִים אַחֲרֵיהֶם:

The "something" is זֹנִים, which is clearly derived from זוֹנָה, "prostitute";^* hence the translation of the KJV "that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring." It always amused me that the Singer's Prayerbook bowdlerised this to "which you are inclined to go after."

* Which root also gives us, just to throw a linguistic spanner in the works, מָזוֹן, "nourishment". Which tells us something interesting about the ancient Semites' (almost certainly further back than the ancient Israelites) attitude towards either food or prostitution. ;^)

My initial inclination was to translate this "which you lust after." But then it occurred to me possibly I've been misled by the language of the traditional translations. "Go whoring after" implies following one's lusts. However, most prostitutes aren't in the business because they are following their lust. And, indeed, in English "to prostitute oneself" implies a sense of self-betrayal: giving up something one should hold as sacred in pursuit of another cause. And possibly this is what is meant here.

Possibly. I should go home and look this up in my dictionaries.

I'm coming towards the end of my project of typesetting the Friday night siddur. It's been educational, in terms of translating the texts myself; I've really got to grip with them at a deep level, both in terms of having to put myself in, say, the Psalmist's mindset, and at a simpler linguistic level: I'm able to translate most of them myself, with the second and centenary edition Singer's Prayerbooks, and the Artscroll siddur in front of me for guidance; but have in front of me, for when I need them, Klein, Jastrow, my Bantam-Megiddo McDictionary, and a dictionary of the Old Testament that came into my hands many years ago.

From the perspective of nearing completion, I'm now regretting that I did not make notes on some of the choices I've had to make (as I can't remember them). Here's a few examples I do remember, to make my point.

For example, consider the passage "הָאֵל הַנִּפְרָע לָנוּ מִצָּרֵינוּ. וְהַמְשַׁלֵּם גְּמוּל לְכָל אוֹיְבֵי נַפְשֵׁנוּ", from the בְּרָכָה after the שְׁמַע. It's about G-d punishing the enemies of Israel... but both verbs chosen have financial secondary meanings, so I decided to translate the passage retaining that double meaning: "the God Who dealt our foes their due, and delivered retribution on all enemies of our souls". I don't think (IIRC) the siddurim before me reflected that double meaning.

Sometimes the text can be really obtuse. Consider the passage from Psalm 92 "וַתַּבֵּט עֵינִי בְּשׁוּרָי בַּקָּמִים עָלַי מְרֵעִים תִּשְׁמַעְנָה אָזְנָי": "My eyes will see my enemies; when evildoers rise against me, my ears shall hear." But a little earlier in the psalm, it reads "When the wicked spring up like grass, and all workers of evil flourish, it is that they be destroyed forever—but You, LORD, are on high forever. For behold Your enemies, LORD: behold, Your enemies shall be destroyed; all workers of evil shall be scattered." Consequently, the correct translation appears to be: "My eyes will see [the fate of] my enemies; when evildoers rise against me, my ears shall hear [of their downfall]." Would this have been obvious to the psalmist? (Consider the linguistics of three thousand years hence trying to understand the Americanism "I could care less", when the context implies exactly the opposite. (Perhaps there's an elided "as if" there?))

Finally, consider the passage "אַתָּה קִדַּשְׁתָּ אֶת יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי לִשְׁמֶךָ, תַּכְלִית מַעֲשֵׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ": "You sanctified the seventh day for Your name, the [something] of the making of heaven and earth." תַּכְלִית evidently meant something like "completion"; the same root is found twice in the start of the Sabbath passage in Genesis: וַיְכֻלּוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ וְכָל צְבָאָם. וַיְכַל" אֱלֹהִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה": "The heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host. On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made." However, Klein also gave a meaning of purpose, aim, objective, or something like that; and the Bantam-Megiddo, with its emphasis on Modern Hebrew, gave that as the only meaning.

Of course, one has to consider the time at which this text was written, to try and get a handle on what would be the most appropriate translation; in this case, first millennium, referring back to the Biblical text, but sitting in a separate linguistic stratum. As an aside, it occurs to me you can see the same duality of meaning in the English word "end", only that would not be appropriate here. What is appropriate, and which therefore I appropriated, is the word used in the ArtScroll: "culmination". I like the way that contains both senses.

The word תּוֹרָה Torah, is normally translated "Law". I prefer "Instruction": it derives from the same root as מוֹרֶה moreh, teacher. However, the root's original sense was one of giving direction; it's also the word used for casting something, and for shooting arrows; for example 1 Samuel 20:20 (Jonathan to David): וַאֲנִי שְׁלֹשֶׁת הַחִצִּים צִדָּה אוֹרֶה "I will shoot (oreh) three arrows to the side."

It occurred to me the other day that when Abraham sends his son Ishmael away, the text records that he grew up in the desert and became an archer. Might the text be saying in a subtle way here that the children of Ishmael—the (way pre-Islam) Arabs—are also heirs to the religious heritage of Abraham as much as the children of Isaac, who was traditionally viewed as scholarly.

Sadly, no: the use of Torah in the sense of the Jewish Law as encapsulated in the Pentateuch is anachronistic at the time the Torah was both set and written (whether you consider it as written when it was set or not).

Still, it makes a nice midrash (for which anachronism is, of course, par for the course).

Ooh, this is fascinating: apparently originally the term was not חתן תורה (Ḥāthān Torāh), the bridegroom of the Law, but חתם תורה (Ḥāthām Torāh), the sealer of the Law.

This ties in the mutation of ־ם to ־ן in Mishnaic Hebrew, and later scribes switching it back except in plural endings: if people hadn't realised this was such a mutation, it would result in the above change of meaning.

(Also, a note from elsewhere: I read that some of the earliest שמחת תורה piyyutim are clearly meant to accompany a spring festival; and that these would have been used in the three and a half year cycle when the Torah reading was completed in the spring.

Today I learned that the name Addis Ababa means new flower, the first element being cognate to Hebrew חדש ḥadaš (and also to the first element of Qart Ḥadašt, mangled in English to "Carthage"), and the second cognate to Hebrew אביב, meaning "spring" (the season) (but originally, I also learned, meaning barley^*), as in the name Tel Aviv.

Rummaging around on Wikipedia to follow this up, I finally learned how to pronounce ṣ (the Hebrew letter צ^†, and the Arabic ﺹ). A teach yourself Arabic book I once look at on this subject told me the difference between s and ṣ is that between the English words "sam" and "psalm". Eh? The difference lies in the vowels! However, Wikipedia told me ṣ is a emphatic consonant, and (in Hebrew) "was likely pronounced as a pharyngealized /s/", viz., "articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx".

Which doesn't actually answer the case for Arabic, but I think the two are the same.

* Which ought to amuse

curious_reader.

† In the Ashkenazi pronunciation I grew up with, and the standard Israeli pronunciation (being the Sephardi pronunciation (which renders it properly) watered down to remove the sounds (like this one) Ashkenazim can't manage, צ is pronounced /ts/, not /ṣ/.

The Collins Concise English Dictionary gives the etymology of "pitta" as a Greek word for a cake; Jastrow's Dictionary of the Talmud (etc) gives פיתא pita as the Aramaic of Hebrew פת pat, a piece of bread (and the Encyclopaedia Judaica gives פַת becoming פִיתָה as an example of vowel transformation in Hebrew). The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology has nothing to say on the subject, neither does the Oxford English Dictionary (first edition).

Can anyone resolve this conundrum and tell me whether the English word really does come from Hebrew, or Greek, or the Greek from the Hebrew, or whether we're looking at two unrelated words that just happen to sound the same and have similar meaning?

[Update: More information on Balashon—thanks, Dave!]

( Notes from Limmud: The Story of Hebrew )

It's a well-known fact that the names of the Hebrew months were picked up during the Babylonian exile; the months mentioned earlier in the Bible have completely different names. It's also well-known that at least one of them -- Tammuz -- is named after a Babylonian god. But I knew nothing about where the other ones came from, so, after rysmiel and papersky were wibbling on about Babylonian culture the other day, I had a look to see what Wikipedia had to say on the subject:

Contemporary Hebrew	Akkadian	Meaning
ניסן (Nîsān)	Nisānu	from Sumerian "Nisag", meaning "first fruits" (yay, another Sumerian loan-word in Hebrew)
אייר (Iyyār)	Ayyaru	"rosette" or "blossom"
סיון (Sîwān)	Simānu	"Season, time" -- evidently cognate to Hebrew זמן ("zeman")
תמוז (Tammuz)	Dūzu	From the Sumerian god Dumuzi
אב (Āv)	Abu
אלול (Elul)	Elūlu
תשרי (Tishre)	tašrītu	"beginning", from "šurrû" to begin.
מרחשון ([Mar]Ḥešvan)	Waraḫsamnu
כסלו (Kislēw)	Kislimu
טבת (Ṭēḇēṯ)	ṭebētu
שבט (Shevat)	šabātu
אדר (Ădhār)	adaru

I thought this was pretty interesting even where it doesn't give the meanings. (I wonder, also, if there are Hebrew cognates to the other Akkadian words it gives.) Look at all those /m/s becoming /v/. I wonder if the Babylonians pronounced /m/ whilst continuing to breathe out between their lips, like the Spanish pronounce /v/.