Nice collection.
I have some doubts about the guitar though! 
Maybe a lyre?
Good point. 
The word “κιθάρα” which today means guitar did indeed correspond to a different musical instrument than the modern one, yet considering that the word guitar etymologycally stems from “κιθάρα” and the exact same word is still in use after all those millenia (which I always find impressive), it felt disingenuous for me to translate it into “lyre” in a topic about languages
4 Likes
In Italian it’s called cetra, which stems from κιθάρα as well.
I searched for the English word for cetra and I found zither, which is quite different, at least in modern language. So I choose lyre instead.
Probably the best choice would have been kithara, but I didn’t know it before. 
4 Likes
Here is something else that is interesting with a new word for all of us
We owe democracy to an incorrigible party-animal
By Dimitris Sarantakos
( This story is taken from the 6th book, Erato, paragraphs 122-128)
As we all know democratic institutions were born in Athens and the first and foremost in that effort was Kleisthenis, son of Megaclis and Agaristis. What most people do not know is that it was very possible that this particular Kleisthenis was never born, but in his place would have been some other Kleisthenis, also son of Agaristis, but his father would have been named Ippokleides and wouldn’t care about democracy at all.
But let us take things from the beginning, tyrant of the important, at the time, city of Sikyon was Kleisthenis, a politician of humble origins that rose to power with the help of poor and middle class farmers. As with most tyrants of his time, he turned against the rich and powerful, put a lot of pressure on them and made Sikyon be upgraded to a significant power in the region of north Peloponnisos.
That Kleisthenis had a daughter, named Agaristi, which, despite his humble beginnings, he dreamed of marrying her with a groom of a known family. Thus, when Agaristi reached marrying age (at the time, between 16 and 18 years old) Kleisthenis invited in his palace eligible grooms from the most prestigious families of the Panhellenic world and hosted them there in the most lavish way for months, while studying the character and the behaviour of each prospective groom.
To that invitation a lot of people responded, around fourteen. Candidates from Italy, Smindyrides from Sybaris, Damasos of Siri. From the town of Epidamnos in the Andriatic came Amfimnistos Epistrofou, as were as an Aetolian, an Epirot, someone from Thessaly and one from Eretria in Evia. Of course, most people were from Peloponnisos, five people, with most reknown of them Leokydes, son of Feidon, king of Argos. Two Atheneans also arrived. Ippokleides Teisandrou and Megacles Alkmaeonos.
Right from the start the excellence of Ippokleides was obvious. Not only his origin was from Kypselides of Corinth (transl note: which was nearby and a very good place), but he was the most beautiful, smartest and most athletic of them all. He was also an amazing party-animal (transl note: for lack of a better translation) which was not considered an issue, but an advantage for the Ancient Greeks.
During the last night of the hosting, Kleisthenis, who had settled on picking Ippokleides, made a farewell party. But in that party, Ippokleides starting drinking more than usual, got very drunk and ordered a flutist to play for him and he started dancing alone. First lakonic dances, then attic dances, then a kordakas (a sort of tsifteteli dance) and at the end he ordered a big table to be brought out and he got on top of it and started dancing, first normally with his feet and then … with his hands, setting his head on the table and waving his feet around (1) (do note that the ancient Greeks did not wear any sort of modern trousers or underwear). (transl note: Ippokleides seems to have been the first break dancer 
)
Kleisthenis, who from the beginning of the dancing shenanighans was very distraught by watching the behaviour of his future son in law, lost patience at this point. He was furious and he ordered the flutist to stop while shouting at the dancing man:
«Ὦ παῖ Τεισάνδρου, ἀπορχήσαό γε μὲν τὸν γάμον!» (2) ( Which means: Son of Teisander, with the dance you lost the marriage)
Ippokleides was not intimidated at all and he gave a carefree reply to his host:
«Οὐ φροντὶς Ἱπποκλείδῃ» ( Ippokleides does not care ) ( transl note: φροντίς literally means caring for someone or something else. I find it fascinating how ancient that idiom is, even though the phrase itself is not self-evident in its meaning and a lot of other words, more literal in the desired meaning, could have replaced “care”)
Thus, Kleisthenis, after he farewelled his guests, giving to each (Ippokleides included) rich gifts, kept as his son in law the other Athenean groom, Megacles of Alkmaeon, which was married with Agaristi.
From that marriage a son was born, who took the name of his grandfather, Kleisthenis Megacleous, who was the front-figure of expelling Peisistratids and installing democracy in Athens. One daughter of Kleisthenis the younger was also named Agaristi and was the grandmother of Pericles.
Author’s Post Signum:
-
(1) During the description of Ippokleides’ dance, who is dancing on the table head down feet up, waving them around, Herodotus writes «τοίσι σκέλεσι εχειρονόμησε», which means "he made (hand) gestures with his feet. The verb «χειρονομώ» is still in use even today, its meaning has not changed at all, yet even if we used it today it would have been an oxymoron since the etymology of «χειρονομώ» has within it the word “χέρι” (which means hand). Of course even today we say «χειμερινό θέρετρο» (transl note: It means “winter place for vacation”, but the word “θέρετρο” literally means “a place for the summer”
), whilie I personally have stopped thinking that the phrase «θετικές επιπτώσεις» (transl note: It means “positive consequences”) is wrong so… (transl note: that hanging “so…” is maybe the most modern Greek thing ever imho … it means “so, ok who cares, I don’t know either”, but it depicts an extra level of “I do not know and neither do you” by not even bothering to complete the sentence 
) -
(2) Do notice the word «απορχήσαο» or rather the verb «απορχούμαι», which can be found only in this work by Herodotus, and nowhere else in the whole known ancient and modern Greek writtings. Its meaning is interesting, since it means «I lost because I danced», which is exactly the equivalent of the english phrasal verb «X away», here «dance away» -you danced the marriage away. I wonder if there are/were more ancient phrasals of that kind.
Original source : Οι αρχαίοι είχαν την πλάκα τους (Δημ. Σαραντάκος) 10 – Χρωστάμε τη δημοκρατία σ’ έναν αδιόρθωτο γλεντζέ « Οι λέξεις έχουν τη δική τους ιστορία
Hopefully my translation was adequate and I didn’t boggle things up with all those notes I inserted… isn’t it amazing how one dance changed the whole history of the western world?
5 Likes
I read this story just last month when I was preparing for my exam. It’s in Herodotus, book 6. One scholar, D. Ogden, (The Crooked Kings of Greece, London 1997) makes a point that this word here is also a pun on ὄρχεις ‘testicles’ because, as you said, he wore no undies. So it could also be heard as “you’ve made a balls up of your marriage”.
As for similar phrases, the commentary I have here cites ἀποδακρύω τὲν γνώμην, ‘I weep away my resolution’ (Aristophanes Wasps 983), ἐκκυβεύομαι ‘gamble away’ (Plutarch, Art. 17.5), ἐξορχεύομαι ‘dance away’, (Aelian, NA 16.23).
4 Likes
Note how θετικές comes from τίθημι ‘to put, to set in place’, while positive comes from ponere ‘to put, to set in place’. I think the Latin word is a loan-translation from the Greek terminus. The Latins translated some Greek philosophical scriptures but needed to invent lots of new words for this.
2 Likes
He was also an amazing party-animal (transl note: for lack of a better translation)
hedonist? It even derives from a Greek word, ἡδονή (hēdonḗ, pleasure).
party animal is, as you know, a low-register term; hedonist is the high-register equivalent.
You could also consider bacchant or bacchanal, again ultimately from Greek, obviously from Βάκχος (Bákkhos, Bacchus). These words could be considered members of the “poetic register”, though, and are obscure.
3 Likes
In Herodotus’ text, it does not explicitily say party-animal (or any synonym). When introducing the suitors, he says Hippokleides was πλούτῳ καὶ εἴδεϊ προφέρων Ἀθηναίων ‘outstanding amongst the Athenians in wealth and beauty’.
Later, the bridesfather Megacles examines everyone on τῆς τε ἀνδραγαθίας καὶ τῆς ὀργῆς καὶ παιδεύσιός τε καὶ τρόπου, ‘their gentlemanity, temperament, education and character’ by observing the younger ones how they behave in the gym, the older ones at the dinner table.
On the day that the bridesfather wants to announce his choice at a large banquet, there are contests among the suitors in music and τῷ λεγομένῳ ἐσ τὸ μέσον lit. ‘the speaking in company’. Imagine some talent show where some perform an instrument or sing songs, other do witty sophisticated stand-up comedy.
3 Likes
True, but that is the estimation of the author of the article. And given what Ippokleides was doing, it was a good estimation I think.
One scholar, D. Ogden, (The Crooked Kings of Greece, London 1997) makes a point that this word here is also a pun on ὄρχεις ‘testicles’ because, as you said, he wore no undies. So it could also be heard as “you’ve made a balls up of your marriage”.
I love that pun, by the way. 
And because I am a silly person, it just dawned to me that if you pronounce the word correctly (like Pericles) and put a capital letter in front of it, the word Testicles sounds like a Greek name (Τεστικλής) χαχαχα
Good suggestion though hedonism is usually associated with a full spectrum of debauchery, while a person that gets drunk at a party and goes bananas is not really that versatile in his sources of pleasure. 
Indeed quite difficult words for someone to recognise in a normal text. A better choice would have been satyrical, in its more literal meanings (being like a satyr in behaviour), but that word has been overused in a different meaning for so much that noone would recognise it if used in its original premise, methinks.
Case it point, to distinguish all that, if you have a satyrical collumn in a newspaper you are called “σατυρικός” in modern Greek. If you are behaving like a satyr, you are called “σάτυρος” directly, but that distinction of keeping the word satyr as a standalone epithet does not exist in English, to my best of knowledge.
2 Likes
@Sanonius I just watched this video, what do you think of it?
I was a bit puzzled by his comments on the elision of word-final m, which isn’t something I’ve ever read about before. What he says about the exact pronunciation of s, and the transformation of /c/ → /g/ in certain positions, was also new to me.
1 Like
I haven’t watched it yet and am not gonna do so right before bedtime, but if Lucius has anything to say about it, it is sure well-informed.
1 Like
I’ve watched a bit more now. One thing I notice in Luke’s idiolect is that he nasalises almost everything, but that’s because he’s American, I guess. I’ll add more stuff when I watched the whole thing.
Elision of word-final m is indeed common and evident in poetry. Cicero argued against saying cum nobis because it sounds to close to cunno bis.
“Why is it stressed on the /ge/?” I feel this on a very personal level. Why is there so much stress on the /ge/?
I’ve read about the /s/ somewhere on wikipedia but couldn’t quite imagine how this was supposed to sound like and I don’t know the reasoning behind this reconstruction. But if Lucius says this has to be so, I believe him. The voiced c is new to me.
I very much enjoyed the video and I’d like to watch that show now. Either that or to try to become friends with Lucius, he seems a nice guy. I once bumped into him on the reddit as he answered a comment of mine. He’s also quite a singer and did “Fly me to the Moon” and other songs in Latin.
1 Like
Hey, watch this video. It’s about how it was hard to localize detective game because each language has its own quirks. And because words can imply different things in different languages it’s hard to leave clues that would work regardless of translation. And, for example, some methods of dying can be the same word in one language but completely different in another.
3 Likes
When NPC in games will use AI programs like GPT-3 to talk instead of manually written by real people dialogs, it will be impossible to translate.
Training neural network with different language would be too expensive and NPC will have other(different) manners (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_structure)
System like Google Translate will be the only hope.
1 Like
Why English i, n and Japanese い, ん have nearly same shape and pronunciation?
They have completely separate and different origin…
4 Likes
What about these?
| Japanese | Lookalike |
|---|---|
| た (ta) | t |
| て (te) | T |
1 Like
I think in most scripts, we can expect a “trunked” sign with a central “column”.
eg. English E, F, I, J, K, L, P, R, T; Japanese す, た,て, に, ま etc.
We can also expect a “round sign”.
eg. English C, D, G, O, U; Japanese う, お, な, ぬ, ね, の, ひ, ゆ etc.
And a “dotted” sign.
eg. English i, j; Japanese ら, む, ふ
And a “symmetrical” sign, with either horizontal or vertical symmetry, often imperfect:
A lot of English letters fall into this group: A, B, C, D, E, H, I, K, M, N, O, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z; and some kana like い, く, こ, そ, つ, ひ, へ, り, ろ etc.
So, it doesn’t seem so surprising that there is some overlap in form.
2 Likes
A colleague of mine did a lecture on different Runic alphabets. One of his conclusions is that there are only so many differents kinds of strokes you can have in a glyph to make it practicable to write by predominantly right-handed people.
2 Likes
I tried my hand at translating the Table of Contents of the Multilingual Go Book.
Enchiridion Circumvenínum Ab Inceptóre
Continentia
Volúmen I – Proemium
Quid est Circumvenium et quid oportet nós cúrámus? I
Régulae Elementáriae (calculós collocens / capiens / oculós / kó / énumerens) VI
- Dignitátés Circumvenínum et lúdí handicapínum ad omnibus XV
Volúmen II – Formae
-
Affinitátés inter calculós duós XVIII
-
Affinitátés inter calculós numerósós XXIII
-
Ops et múrós XXIII
-
Ós tigris XXVI
-
Scála XXVIII
-
Articulus bambusína XXXI
-
Forma ménsína XXXII
-
Ós dracónis XXXIV
-
Hane / Hane duplex XXXV
-
Columna ferrária XXXVI
-
Triangulum vacuum XXXVI
-
Pincerés XXXVII
-
Glóssae XXXVIII
Volúmen III – Nós Lúdámus
Príncipium XXXIX
Lúdus medius VL
-
Levis et gravis L
-
Lúdus terminális LV
Volúmen IV – Jósekí et Fúsekí
Quae est jósekí et fúsekí? LXIII
-
Jósekí IV-IV mokús stéllína LXV
-
Jósekí III-III invásína LXVI
-
Jósekí keimína LXVIII
Jósekí III-IV mokús LXXXI
Fúsekí Kobajásidis LXXXIX
Fúsekí Sinica ICIII
San-Ren-Sei ICVII
Volúmen V – Impetens et múniens
De úniverse pugnens CI
Invásiónés CIII
Túgí CIX
Redigens CXIII
Impetens cum opem CXXIX
Volúmen VI – Vita et Mortem
De Vita et Mortem CILI
Formae vívae et mortuae
-
Formae lacúnárum III mokuum CILII
-
Formae lacúnárum IV mokuum CILIV
-
Formae lacúnárum V mokuum CILVI
-
Formae lacúnárum VI mokuum CILVII
-
Formae lacúnárum VII mokuum CILIX
Tesújí CL
Túmegó CLXII
-
L coetus CLXV
-
J coetus CLXVII
Volúmen VII – Themata Ulterióra
Disce ad ámittás CLXXV
De magis “Levis et Gravis”
De Sabákí
1 Like