As I’ve been going through my Learn to Read Greek workbook which requires a ton of reading aloud, it takes me back to my Homer class and how absolutely tiring it was to chant for so long. Even speaking the language at a normal, conversational speed is winding– is this the nature of the language or simply because it isn’t my first language? I’m inclined to the former based on my experience with Spanish, but I’ll have to admit being swayed since I grew up around a predominantly Spanish speaking family. Anyway, does anyone have any thoughts on this? I’m quite interested!
I’ve always thought that the Bible, at least in its English translations, was very discreet in its language describing matters of a bedroom nature, namely because of the use of the phrase “to know.” We see it everywhere, “Adam ‘knew’ his wife and she conceived”, “Abraham ‘knew’ Sarah”, etc… I always that this was a subtle translation from what might be a rather explicit Hebrew word. However, it wasn’t until my study of the Greek New Testament that I learned, much to my surprise, that “to know” is actually the verb used! In St. Luke’s Gospel at the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary responds to the Angel Gabriel’s news saying, “πως εσται τουτο, επι ανδρα ου γινωσκω?”, literally, “how can this be, since I don’t know man?” The Vulgate has the same word, cognosco. What I assumed was an English liberty in translation for the sake of decency actually exitsts in the original Greek!
As I am unlearned in Hebrew, I have no idea what the word the Torah uses for “intimacy” or even “sex”. Nevertheless, it’s quite thought provoking that the Greek New Testament actually uses a word meaning not “to have sex” but “to know”. Could this be because the act of love is in a sense a “knowing” of the partners for each other? If we saw sexual intimacy as really a “knowing”, perhaps our modern attitudes toward it would be less promiscous? Who’s to say, but it would be cool to know the Hebrew word used in the Torah. After all, if it’s in the Bible, it must be good…right? 🙂
Yes, classical languages present some new challenges, but many of the challenges they present are the same as those we encounter in our own language. For example, I am having a hard time with the vocabulary in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. I am also, however, reading an English translation of Anne Catherine Emmerich, and I have to keep a dictionary with me at all times! And a passage like I quoted above is full of its own vocabulary. If anything, studying classics has made me more aware of the difficulty and ambiguity of language in general, and it often makes me wonder whether we ever really succeed in communicating anything to one another!
Almost a decade ago, my mom passed away in a very untimely fashion. Until I turned 18, I contemplated what sort of a tattoo I want to commemorate her tragically short life. I wanted something interesting, meaningful and original. She had always been an fervent student of the classics, and when I was young she would often read them to me. Her favorite was the Illiad and her favorite quote from it was when Glaucus told Diomedes that his father always told him “always be the best my boy, the bravest, and hold your head high above the rest.” Now this would be a good candidate, if not for the consideration that I have no background in Greek and I’d rather not have a language that I don’t speak on my body. In the months and years to come, many ideas floated around, each seeming worse than the previous. Finally, in my sophomore year in college, we were getting a lesson on irregular superlatives. Instead of paying attention, I was playing with phrases in my Latin class and I crafted this “Semper Liberrimus Ero,” or “Always will I be the freest.” It was coined by me, not taken from anywhere, 100% original and it plays into the obsession with freedom and living the freest possible life that I have always had. It is this obsession that has led me down the path of being a fervent Libertarian as well as falling in love with historical figures such as Cicero and Brutus. I took it home, obsessed over it, said it was forever to be the motto of my life. Then one day I had an epiphany, realizing that it could also be the memorial for my Mom that I had been seeking for so long. It worked perfectly: Always, I will be the freest, tis my hardheaded nature. But to take it a step further, I will make sure to remain the freest in memory of her, since she lost her chance not only at living freely, but at living at all. Thus, she will forever live on in me. This makes it doubly powerful, because not only does the phrase have a paticularly powerful meaning to me, but it is also a way to remember her by. I truly love this tattoo on my back that serves as both monument to her and an inspiration to me.
This compilation of wacky laws underscores the importance of context – and in some cases, language skills. Some of them appear to be bogus, so more research is needed. Students of Latin and Greek – you are cordially invited to examine those and attempt to fix what is there to be fixed. Also, follow the link above for wacky laws from abroad.
3) Florida: An elephant tied to a parking meter must pay the regular parking fee.
4) Belvedere, USA: No dog shall appear in public without its master on a leash.
6) Oklahoma: If dogs wish to congregate in groups of three or more on a private property, they need to obtain a permit which must be signed by the Mayor.
7) Idaho: It is illegal for a man to present a box of chocolates to his girlfriend if it weighs anything less than 50 pounds.
8) Blythe, California: A person must own at least two cows before he can be permitted to wear cowboy boots in public.
9) Los Angeles: While committing a bank robbery, it is illegal to shoot the teller with a water pistol.
20) Washington, USA: It is mandatory for a motorist with criminal intentions to stop at the city limits and telephone the chief of police that he is entering the city.
21) Texas: When two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.
22) Memphis, Tennessee: It is illegal for a woman to drive by herself. A man must walk or run in front of the vehicle, waving a red flag in order to warn approaching pedestrians and motorists if the vehicle is going over 5 mph.
23) Nebraska, USA: A motorist approaching a horse at night must send up warning red rockets and Roman candles, throw a scenic tarpaulin over his car to conceal it from the horse, and take his machine apart and hide the parts in the grass if the tarpaulin doesn’t soothe the horse.
24) Kentucky, USA: No female shall appear in a bathing suit on any highway within this state unless she is escorted by at least two officers or unless she is armed with a club. The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it apply to female horses.
Many of you already heard and saw this nifty and fully grammatical sentence. I posted it on my other blog last week. This morning, The Slinger (English for Sphendonetes) responded:
I’ve been working on this for days, and I never want to see the d*mn word “buffalo” again. The very sound of it now makes my skin crawl. I also never knew it could be a verb.
The big question for me was whether the first Buffalo was a proper name or not. You can’t tell based on the capitalization, because it would be capitalized either way. I take it as the city.
So…
Buffalo buffalo (the buffalo who live in Buffalo)
[whom] Buffalo buffalo buffalo
buffalo (main verb)
Buffalo buffalo. (Direct object.)
I.e.: Buffalo who live in Buffalo, whom buffalo living in Buffalo buffalo, buffalo buffalo who live in Buffalo.
And if that makes no sense, don’t buffalo me about it.
The Slinger buffaloed the buffalo sentence into submission. He’s pretty smart and determined, but I also attribute it to the superb language awareness he acquired as a student of Latin and Greek. Anyone who sight-reads Euthyphro can deal with sentences like this.
Here is an even fuller explanation of the buffalo sentence – enjoy!
Legalese – aka the language they use in courts – is a very, very difficult language. It is English, and yet it isn’t. Those of you who plan to study law will have to fight linguistic monsters such as the one below. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to – I just wanted to show you novices what you will be able to figure out once we learn how to read Latin:
If the agency determined that the petitioner is an adopted person, if the department of health informed the agency either that the file of releases does not contain a release or releases filed by one or both of the petitioner’s biological parents that authorize the release of identifying information to him and does not contain a release or releases filed by any biological sibling that authorizes the release Continue reading →
Tim and I read some Euripides on Friday and talked about the missing musical aspect of it. I was surprised he’d never been to the opera. Originally intended as a return to the ideal of Greek tragedy, opera provides an indirect opportunity to appreciate Greek drama. You can get standing tickets for $10 apiece at the SF opera, so go and see some, Tim!
As it is, we have only the librettos of those ancient Greek plays. We read and admire them alright – but imagine their impact if we also had the music! Even insipid opera librettos get a boost when you add sublime music:
This Queen of the Night is awesome – not all are as good. Voice-wise, I’ve probably heard better, but there is something about the visual aspect of opera that can make or break your night, even when you tell yourself not to be so shallow. The visual aspect is absent when you read Greek tragedy – and even if your imagination rivals that of St. Ignatius of Loyola, you may still not be able to imagine it all. Watch this clip, especially the modern performance of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in the second half – the male-only actors wear masks (no musical accompaniment though):
And here is another clip, with scenes from Sophocles’ Oedipus and Euripides’ Medea, performed by unmasked actors, this time both men and women. Less alienating than the one above, huh:) Still no musical accompaniment, but a bit of music is included towards the end of the clip:
And here is a third clip – it is on the development of ancient Greek comedy. You can watch an excerpt from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata here. As you watch it, try to imagine masked men instead of the beautiful female actresses:
We may never be able to experience ancient Greek drama in the same way as the Greeks. And it’s not just the masks, music and all-male cast. For us, plays are something we get to see at will, provided we have the time and $$ for tickets. Performances last 3-4 hours at most, ample intermissions included. And unless you have season tickets, you don’t get to see in the same spot over and over again. So you are normally surrounded by strangers, unless you bring some friends along. Not so in classical Athens, according to the editors of this book:
In classical Athens the price of a ticket was distributed by each local town council (deme) to the citizens in good standing on their records; theater attendance was thus closely linked to citizenship. What is more, the audience sat in the open-air theater below the Acropolis in wedge-shaped sections designated to each of the ten political tribes, just as they did for other city meetings. The audience was overwhelmingly male and, except for tourists and visiting dignitaries, was composed of the same few thousand of active citizens to be seen at any important public meeting, plus those who had travelled from their farms to the city for the five-day holiday known as the Great (or City) Dionysia.
Five-day drama marathon it was! On the first day, the citizens of Athens watched 20 choruses compete – a boys’ and a mens’ chorus from each of the ten tribes. The next day they saw 5 comedies. The last three days were devoted to tragic performances – each day, a playwright would present three tragedies and a satyr play; the spectacle would start early mornings and last for much of the day. If you were a spectator, you couldn’t just get up and leave without endangering your civic status. “Even to come close to the authentic experience,” the above editors write,
…we would have to imagine that Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Sam Shepard had each written three serious plays and a farce for a one-time performance on a national holiday – say, the Fourth of July – in honor of an ancient hero god, perhaps a cross between George Washington and Johnny Appleseed, and that these were preceded by a parade of congressional representatives and cabinet secretaries and federal judges and governors and mayors, that the plays were performed after ceremonies honoring the war dead and our national allies, that bishops and generals and mothers superior had prominent places in the front rows, and that the choruses who sang and danced were composed […] of West Point cadets, dressed sometimes as old veterans, sometimes as servants or refugees or prisoners of war, occasionally (but only rarely), as young men.
That’s it for now – oh, here are some more links on ancient theater:
Acuamur Christo 