Language Learners' Library

Is this even Greek?

For the Minor tier: Swiss German as a dialect continuum has around 5 M speakers (but it continues into Germany); Modern Hebrew has 9 M, Bulgarian 7-8 M, Albanian similarly. Guarani 4-5 M, Mongolian too.

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Let’s see…

ΔΙΣΙΥ?ΙΣΤΩ
ΑΓΛΙΣΚΑΤEΥΝΗΝ
ΑΝΕΘΗΚE ΕΥΤΥ
XΩΣΕΤΟΥΗΞE
ΔΑΙΣΙΟΥΗΙ

It looks like some of the Σ are actually E. I can make out ανεθηκ- ‘erected’. I assume the text to be along the lines of ‘N.N. erected this stone for N.N, his beloved wife/daughter/catamite’. The HI at the end looks like a dative singular feminine.

I’m not sure about the letter I declared to be an OY-ligature; one or both of them could be a weird-looking Φ, or something completely different.
So maybe: “For Disiy?istos Aglis, his wife, erected [this]. Never came luckily…” I don’t think I can figure out the rest. If this some yaoi story again…

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Well, they don’t have a transcription on the site… but it’s labelled as Dedication to Zeus Hypsistos.

Ah, so the first words are Διί ὑψιστῷ in Attic, but here, the name of Zeus in the dative takes a slightly different form, maybe Διεί. That’s fine, in the 2nd century CE that was sure homophonic. In the second line that gives κατ᾿ εὐχήν, ‘according to a prayer’ and a personal name Agais. So, “For Zeus, the Supreme, Agais erected according to his vows and under good auspices…” The last part is still obscure to me. There is maybe a dot between ἀνέθηκε and εὐτυχώς, but that would be weird; in sentence-final position, the aorist and imperfect forms would take a -ν (n). What does you translation say?

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There isn’t a translation either, sorry. It was just that image, the title, and details of where it was found.

I found the page you likely got it from. They say it dates from May 119 CE. How can they be so sure? There must be a date on the inscription itself! The word ἔτου means “In the year”. Some of the following letters will be used as numbers. ΗΞΣ are 268, Δαισίου ΗΙ is the Daisios 16th, a month in early summer, May. If counting from the Seleucid reckoning, 312 BCE, then 268 should give the year 44 BCE. Counting backwards from 119 CE, it gives 150 BCE. I don’t know what to do with this information.

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“The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either.”

– Sir William Jones

Indo-European language tree – almost half the world’s population have an Indo-European first language.

Perhaps one day, we’ll be able to look at a tree like this with all the world’s languages on…

(If language is monogenetic, of course)

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Nice, I haven’t seen that chart before. Looks cool. I’m kinda offended by the fact that they split Greek into all dialects, but kept Arpitan, Swiss German and Rumantsch each as a single entity. They forgot Middle High German, which is the actual source of Yiddish and Swiss German and Allemannic. There are probably other mistakes of the same kind regarding other languages and dialect groups (Kurdish and Romani, for example). And where’s Albanian?

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The source of Yiddish is largely Hebrew as well, though, no?

Yeah, and Slavic. I’m by no means an expert, but I think one can say, Yiddish is as much German with Hebrew and Slavic loanwords as English is Saxon with French and Danish loans. I can follow a Yiddish text if written in Latin script.

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注文(ちゅうもん)- ideal or wishful plan by a player
エグる - invading opponent’s formation from beneath (borrow in)
大斜定石(たいしゃじょうせき)- taisha joseki

Sentence of the day:
三段に進める人は、碁を打つ人の二百人に一人くらいでしょう。

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Cool!! I never made the connection between the kanji and the name of the joseki (large diagonal)

taisha is an archaic homonym of ogeima.

Can someone help me with a short phrase in Latin?

I am translating this weird text where “a spirit appears in persona Martis”. Does that mean the spirit looks like the god Mars?

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@KAOSkonfused yes.

Grammar Challenge
Take a song in your target language, analyze its syntax, learn its translation and memorise it by heart, so you have a repertoire of phrases and grammatical constructions easily available.

For Latin, there’s this one, for example:

Gaudeamus Igitur (Let's be happy!)

Gaudeamus igitur, iuuenes dum sumus! (bis [that means ‘two times’; this first line and the last line is always repeated])
Post iucundam iuuentutem, post molestam senectutem,
nos habebit humus! (*bis)

Vbi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere?
uadite ad superos, uadite and inferos -
ubi iam fuere?

Vita nostra breuis est, breui finietur
Venit mors atrociter, rapit nos atrociter,
nemini parcetur

Viuat academia, uiuant professores!
Viuat membrum quodlibet, uiuant membra quaelibet,
semper sint in flore!

Viuant omnes uirgines, faciles formosae!
Viuant et mulieres, tenerae, amabiles,
bonae, laboriosae.

Viuat et respublica et qui illam regit
Viuat nostra ciuitas, Maecenatum caritas,
quae nos hic protegit.

Pereat tristitia, pereant osores
pereat diabolus, quiuis anti-burschius
atque irrisores.

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Thanks! :smiley:

What text are you reading? Are you doing Latin homework?

No, it’s work. :grin: It’s an old German text with only a few Latin words in it - a “Geisterzwang” from the 18th century that claims to be much older and written by Dr. Faust himself. No idea why the customer needs a translation / digitalization. He’s not a historian. I hope he doesn’t believe it’s genuine and wants to actually summon spirits… :thinking: