Greek Particles (1990)(specgram.com)
specgram.com
Greek Particles (1990)
https://specgram.com/Babel.I.2/07.sriyatha.greek.html
40 comments
Satirical intent aside it's true that the way some ancient writers use particles makes it much harder to read and understand their writings, to me at least. To be clear, I'm a native Greek speaker and I can comfortably read back to at least the Koine Greek of the Gospels. But I've tried Xenophon in particular, who's mentioned in the article and I remember it being hard going, to the point I gave up and continued with the modern Greek translation (I had an edition with the ancient and modern text on opposite pages).
I distinctly remember being very confused about the spray of particles interjected between nouns and verbs, and trying to shut out the noise of the particles to be able to parse a sentence. I probably got a headache.
The problem is that, the meaning of "ενταύθα", "ουν", "ον", "γε", "δε", "ην", etc may be well known if you take them as individual words, but when you string them together they're apparently trying to say ... something. And that something is opaque and incomprehensible, like an ancient joke for which you have no context.
I distinctly remember being very confused about the spray of particles interjected between nouns and verbs, and trying to shut out the noise of the particles to be able to parse a sentence. I probably got a headache.
The problem is that, the meaning of "ενταύθα", "ουν", "ον", "γε", "δε", "ην", etc may be well known if you take them as individual words, but when you string them together they're apparently trying to say ... something. And that something is opaque and incomprehensible, like an ancient joke for which you have no context.
I agree it depends on the writer and their cultural and educational background. Another example is Thucydides (which as also a native Greek speaker, find funny that anglophones pronounce as Thoo-see-dee-dees, but I digress). Thucydides was considered even in eras closer to him than to as as too abstract/verbose.
Meanwhile Plutarch enriches the laconic myth corpus by reporting that the Lacedaemonians were content with replying to a letter with only the words "About what you wrote: no." Writing style is part of the message.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
Growing up bilingual, I personally always found Greek more verbose than English even in brevity. It's good for avoiding ambiguity and getting your intent across but sometimes bad for colloquial communication.
Meanwhile Plutarch enriches the laconic myth corpus by reporting that the Lacedaemonians were content with replying to a letter with only the words "About what you wrote: no." Writing style is part of the message.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
Growing up bilingual, I personally always found Greek more verbose than English even in brevity. It's good for avoiding ambiguity and getting your intent across but sometimes bad for colloquial communication.
About what you wrote: that's true (Greek can be too verbose than English; it's got inflections).
And yeah, I always get funny looks when I say "Θουκυδίδης" :)
And yeah, I always get funny looks when I say "Θουκυδίδης" :)
I've been learning Biblical Greek, and that was my impression too: The particles he list don't sound at all like the random "uh" and "ah" that he's translating them into.
That said, I do think there's a point that a lot of things end up getting translated in the wrong "register" and lose some of the meaning. One message John the Baptist sends to Jesus is rendered in my translation, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect another?" But in the Greek there's no "should", and the whole sentence is a lot shorter. To me it has much more of a "get off your but and do something" implication; more like, "Hey, are you the one, or are we looking for someone else?"
Same in another place, where where Jesus says something my translation renders, "Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you: [About his upcoming death]" The Greek is a bit more colorful: "Take these words of mine and put them into your ears:" Has much more a sense of exasperation.
That said, I do think there's a point that a lot of things end up getting translated in the wrong "register" and lose some of the meaning. One message John the Baptist sends to Jesus is rendered in my translation, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect another?" But in the Greek there's no "should", and the whole sentence is a lot shorter. To me it has much more of a "get off your but and do something" implication; more like, "Hey, are you the one, or are we looking for someone else?"
Same in another place, where where Jesus says something my translation renders, "Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you: [About his upcoming death]" The Greek is a bit more colorful: "Take these words of mine and put them into your ears:" Has much more a sense of exasperation.
You probably know this, but ancient Greek does not use auxiliary verbs to the extent that English does, as it uses inflection to encode tense, mode, and aspect information. The prosdokōmen could be interpreted as present indicative (“are we expecting?”), yes, but it could also be subjunctive deliberative, of which Smyth sez:
> 1805. Deliberative Subjunctive.—The deliberative subjunctive (present or aorist) is used in questions when the speaker asks what he is to do or say (negative μή).
> …
> N.—The subjunctive question does not refer to a future fact, but to what is, under the present circumstances, advantageous or proper to do or say.
So “should we expect?” or “are we (supposed) to expect?” are valid interpretations of προσδοκῶμεν.
> "Take these words of mine…"
As a sibling comment mentions, this is interpreted (eg, Zerwick and Grosvenor on gLuke) as an idiom, but from Aramaic (I don’t know enough about Semitic languages to say) akin to “before your very eyes” in English.
> 1805. Deliberative Subjunctive.—The deliberative subjunctive (present or aorist) is used in questions when the speaker asks what he is to do or say (negative μή).
> …
> N.—The subjunctive question does not refer to a future fact, but to what is, under the present circumstances, advantageous or proper to do or say.
So “should we expect?” or “are we (supposed) to expect?” are valid interpretations of προσδοκῶμεν.
> "Take these words of mine…"
As a sibling comment mentions, this is interpreted (eg, Zerwick and Grosvenor on gLuke) as an idiom, but from Aramaic (I don’t know enough about Semitic languages to say) akin to “before your very eyes” in English.
The question isn't one of meaning, but of "register": How polite / academic / lofty / frank / rude / direct / challenging / submissive is it?
In English, "Are you the one, or are we expecting someone else?" the second could also be considered a "subjunctive question" which "does not refer to a future fact", but "what is... advantageous or proper to do or say". All I can say is that, in both cases (in English and in Greek), the question seems more challenging to me than "should we expect another". And I think that interpretation makes more sense of the passage. It's not John experiencing doubt about whether Jesus is the Messiah, nor politely inquiring what his status is: It's John saying, "Hey, I'm in jail; I've passed the torch over to you, but you don't seem to be doing anything. Get on with it!" And Jesus says in response, effectively, "I am getting on with it."
And of course "put these words into your ears" is an idiom -- people don't just walk around saying random things like that. The question is, what's the register of the idiom? "Like Hell I will" is an idiom, which has the same basic meaning as "I will certainly not"; but that doesn't make the latter a good translation for the former. "Let my words ring in your ears" is also an idiom, which basically means "Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you", but it's a very different register.
Given the contrast between the context ("While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus did..."), and the message (about his betrayal and death) and the fact that even with the colorful admonition, they didn't understand it, I think "Let these words ring in your ears" would be a closer translation than "Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you".
EDIT: Went back and looked it up (Luke 9:44):
Θέσθε ὑμεῖς εἰς τὰ ὦτα ὑμῶν τοὺς λόγους τούτους
Literally, "Put-you into the ears of you these-here words." Θέσθε (put) already is inflected as second-person plural, so ὑμεῖς (you-all) is grammatically unnecessary; the fact that it's included here means there's special emphasis. He says "τοὺς λόγους τούτους" ("these-here words") rather than, say, "τὰ ῥήματά μου" ("my words"). The whole thing just comes off to me as much more emphatic than "Listen carefully".
In English, "Are you the one, or are we expecting someone else?" the second could also be considered a "subjunctive question" which "does not refer to a future fact", but "what is... advantageous or proper to do or say". All I can say is that, in both cases (in English and in Greek), the question seems more challenging to me than "should we expect another". And I think that interpretation makes more sense of the passage. It's not John experiencing doubt about whether Jesus is the Messiah, nor politely inquiring what his status is: It's John saying, "Hey, I'm in jail; I've passed the torch over to you, but you don't seem to be doing anything. Get on with it!" And Jesus says in response, effectively, "I am getting on with it."
And of course "put these words into your ears" is an idiom -- people don't just walk around saying random things like that. The question is, what's the register of the idiom? "Like Hell I will" is an idiom, which has the same basic meaning as "I will certainly not"; but that doesn't make the latter a good translation for the former. "Let my words ring in your ears" is also an idiom, which basically means "Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you", but it's a very different register.
Given the contrast between the context ("While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus did..."), and the message (about his betrayal and death) and the fact that even with the colorful admonition, they didn't understand it, I think "Let these words ring in your ears" would be a closer translation than "Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you".
EDIT: Went back and looked it up (Luke 9:44):
Θέσθε ὑμεῖς εἰς τὰ ὦτα ὑμῶν τοὺς λόγους τούτους
Literally, "Put-you into the ears of you these-here words." Θέσθε (put) already is inflected as second-person plural, so ὑμεῖς (you-all) is grammatically unnecessary; the fact that it's included here means there's special emphasis. He says "τοὺς λόγους τούτους" ("these-here words") rather than, say, "τὰ ῥήματά μου" ("my words"). The whole thing just comes off to me as much more emphatic than "Listen carefully".
> The Greek is a bit more colorful: "Take these words of mine and put them into your ears:" Has much more a sense of exasperation.
Maybe. Another possibility (in general) is that that's the idiomatic thing to say in the source language, and it only sounds colorful to non-native speakers.
Maybe. Another possibility (in general) is that that's the idiomatic thing to say in the source language, and it only sounds colorful to non-native speakers.
It can be both, can't it? "Get this through your skulls" is an idiom in English, for instance; but it's also colorful and much more emphatic than "Listen carefully to what I'm about to say".
No, it can't be both. "Get this through your skulls" is not an idiomatic† way to say "listen to this" in English. It's an idiomatic way to say "listen to this, idiots". It isn't possible for an expression to be simultaneously unmarked and marked.
For a different Biblical phrase, Jesus is often reported as greeting people with the expression "peace be upon you". This is not exotic; the reason he's doing that is that it's Aramaic for "hello". (And still "hello" today in the region, but we tend to write down the modern version as "salaam" rather than "peace be upon you".)
† It occurs to me, given your question, that you might be confused over the difference between "idiom" [meaning: a more or less fixed expression whose meaning is opaque] and "idiomatic" [meaning: (of a manner of speaking) ordinary / natural / unlikely to raise eyebrows]
It's sense (1) here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idiomatic ("Pertaining or conforming to [...] the natural mode of expression of a language"), not sense (2).
For a different Biblical phrase, Jesus is often reported as greeting people with the expression "peace be upon you". This is not exotic; the reason he's doing that is that it's Aramaic for "hello". (And still "hello" today in the region, but we tend to write down the modern version as "salaam" rather than "peace be upon you".)
† It occurs to me, given your question, that you might be confused over the difference between "idiom" [meaning: a more or less fixed expression whose meaning is opaque] and "idiomatic" [meaning: (of a manner of speaking) ordinary / natural / unlikely to raise eyebrows]
It's sense (1) here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idiomatic ("Pertaining or conforming to [...] the natural mode of expression of a language"), not sense (2).
So I mean, I've only been reading the NT regularly for about 2 years; and in any case the source text itself is 2000 years old, and the quote itself will almost certainly have been a translation from a very different language (Aramaic into Greek). So it's certainly not impossible that those words are just the way you say that in that language.
That said:
- I have learned quite a number of languages at various levels, including French, Turkish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Koine Greek, German, and Japanese. I can have conversations in French and Mandarin, and I'm reading mid-length paragraphs in Koine Greek. So I've been exposed to a fair range of non-English idioms (as in definition 1, "natural mode of expression").
- If there were other examples of this particular idiom in the NT, the study method I use [1] is highly likely to have shown them to me; but I haven't seen other examples of it.
One thing about low-key idioms is that they're short and easy to say; e.g., the idiomatic way to say "quickly" in Mandarin is 马上, which literally means "on a horse". Nobody thinks about horses when they say that; but it's fast enough to go by quickly. When I read the words in Greek out loud, they're not quick -- it's long, and the rhythm of the words slow the phrase down.
Looking at the grammar and the context, in my judgement, I think it very unlikely to be simply be an idiomatic way to say, "Listen carefully"; I go into more detail in a sibling comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43837037
But hey, I could be wrong. :-)
[1] "Guided immersion" https://www.laleolanguage.com
That said:
- I have learned quite a number of languages at various levels, including French, Turkish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Koine Greek, German, and Japanese. I can have conversations in French and Mandarin, and I'm reading mid-length paragraphs in Koine Greek. So I've been exposed to a fair range of non-English idioms (as in definition 1, "natural mode of expression").
- If there were other examples of this particular idiom in the NT, the study method I use [1] is highly likely to have shown them to me; but I haven't seen other examples of it.
One thing about low-key idioms is that they're short and easy to say; e.g., the idiomatic way to say "quickly" in Mandarin is 马上, which literally means "on a horse". Nobody thinks about horses when they say that; but it's fast enough to go by quickly. When I read the words in Greek out loud, they're not quick -- it's long, and the rhythm of the words slow the phrase down.
Looking at the grammar and the context, in my judgement, I think it very unlikely to be simply be an idiomatic way to say, "Listen carefully"; I go into more detail in a sibling comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43837037
But hey, I could be wrong. :-)
[1] "Guided immersion" https://www.laleolanguage.com
That’s actually pretty funny and interesting.
“Ei su o erchómenos, e prosdokómen héteron?”. Yeah, definitely simpler. Mostly because Greek can build up such rich nouns, I think: “erchómenos” sounds more like something a real person would say than “one who was to come”.
“Are you the coming guy” in English sort of lapses into comedy that was absolutely not intended. or was it?
Classical Greek is well outside my field, but one of the things I love about SpecGram when it deals with things I do know, the jokes also have a kernel of truth to them. And in other classical languages I'm more familiar with, there is (IMO) an argument to be made that the texts should be translated more "orally" than they frequently are. There are probably many reasons for this, but I think one of them is that because they are Classical and Important there's a sense of reverence that makes us want to translate them Seriously(tm).
Of course you're entirely right that Greek particles are not some unfathomable mystery. The systematic study of Greek language goes back literal millenia, and the particles are well understood (unlike say Vedic Sanskrit particles).
Of course you're entirely right that Greek particles are not some unfathomable mystery. The systematic study of Greek language goes back literal millenia, and the particles are well understood (unlike say Vedic Sanskrit particles).
> The systematic study of Greek language goes back literal millenia, and the particles are well understood (unlike say Vedic Sanskrit particles).
The systematic study of Sanskrit also goes back literal millennia. Why would the understanding of the particles differ?
To the degree that we believe we understand the ancient Greek particles better, how do we know that's true? It's a dead language; the corpus is the corpus.
The systematic study of Sanskrit also goes back literal millennia. Why would the understanding of the particles differ?
To the degree that we believe we understand the ancient Greek particles better, how do we know that's true? It's a dead language; the corpus is the corpus.
So what trend in modern linguistics is this guy satirizing? Do they like to pretend that well-known things like entautha and oun are mysteries?
Not modern. Outsiders coming into the language (even for modern Greeks—the diglossia TFA mentions between spoken and written language in English existed for 1500+ years in Greek) find particles difficult to grasp, and the dictionary definitions do not really convey all the senses that the particles mean, like mathematics teaches from natural definitions of numbers progressing to Dedekind cuts. You know _Portuguese irregular verbs_, by Alexander McCall Smith, the comic novel where Dr. Professor von Igelfeld rests his reputation on a magisterial volume on the (strangely enough) Portuguese irregular verbs? Denniston’s _The Greek particles_ ultimately spans almost 700 pages after posthumous revisions (1960?). Page after page on individual particles. I think TFA satirizes that drive to squeeze every bit of meaning from the particles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewar_Denniston
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewar_Denniston
Thank you. For future readers, here is the great opus itself.
https://archive.org/details/john-d.-denniston-the-greek-part...
https://archive.org/details/john-d.-denniston-the-greek-part...
Editing audio interviews for podcast I sometimes remove lots of
"particles" as the author calls them (I just call them "ums and ahs"),
TFA poses a question. Do particles have "meaning"? Don't think I ever
heard a discussion of that in any linguistics class, but they do have
an effect. Working in radio/podcast you get quite a deep feel for
speech as more than just words.
I've heard there are effective "de-um" plugins, but I prefer to work with them by hand because they create non-verbal signals, mood, excitement, confidence or lack of confidence about a statement. So often I decide to leave them in. They can signal relations between multiple interviewees, like deference or conversational leadership. Some speakers are impossible to 'de-um' as it's so woven into their speech.
I've heard there are effective "de-um" plugins, but I prefer to work with them by hand because they create non-verbal signals, mood, excitement, confidence or lack of confidence about a statement. So often I decide to leave them in. They can signal relations between multiple interviewees, like deference or conversational leadership. Some speakers are impossible to 'de-um' as it's so woven into their speech.
(The article is satire. Particles are an ill-defined class, they may have "meaning" or change the meaning of something, like "up" in "look up!", or they may say something about the speaker's attitude towards the statement or they may be required syntactically e.g. when posing a question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_particle#Modern_me... )
Unrelated but somewhat funny:
I read someone jokingly proposing we pronunciate "particles" and "molecules" like we do for greek nouns (think "hercules").
And now with these "articles", I'm going to do this in my head for one more day.
I read someone jokingly proposing we pronunciate "particles" and "molecules" like we do for greek nouns (think "hercules").
And now with these "articles", I'm going to do this in my head for one more day.
This is exactly what crossed my mind as I was reading the title. Learning greek makes you perceive so many thing in different light!
A.k.A hesitation markers, non-lexical vocables, disfluence or nonfluence, filler..
It's entertaining how many different labels uh, well kinda um.. names I guess, er, anyway how many er ways to say these thingamabobs there, er, well are.
Wikipedia posits that even neanderthals might have said Ummm.
It's entertaining how many different labels uh, well kinda um.. names I guess, er, anyway how many er ways to say these thingamabobs there, er, well are.
Wikipedia posits that even neanderthals might have said Ummm.
Don't keep us hanging, what might the Neanderthals have said?
> A.k.A hesitation markers, non-lexical vocables, disfluence or nonfluence, filler
It's satirical.
It's satirical.
When translating ancient Greek in class, one often slips into a weird translation-ese that would be pretty funny if you didn't know what was going on. You end up saying things like: "The going-into-the-temple men were on the one hand brave and on the other hand afraid."
Apparently Tai uses quite a bit of infix (not prefixes, or suffixes, but infixes). In in English we have infixes, but they are all expletives of the Nixon style: "Kings-bloody-cross" (a railway station in Sydney), "absa-f..king-luteley" ...
Semitic languages like Arabic & Hebrew have triconsonantal roots where the vowels dance around them to change meaning. k-t-b "to write" becomes kataba "he wrote", katib "writer", maktab "office", maktaba "library", istaktaba "had a copy made" etc etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_root
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_root
>> 4. Hildegarde swallowed, yeah, an entire disk drive.
Well now I must know.
Well now I must know.
Strange article.
Pretty sure the ancient greek translation is wrong in part too.
They say: 'theōrhiā' means 'review', whereas it is obvious to me that it means 'theory'.
Pretty sure the ancient greek translation is wrong in part too.
They say: 'theōrhiā' means 'review', whereas it is obvious to me that it means 'theory'.
The Speculative Granmarian is the premier journal of satirical linguistics, so that’s probably intentional. =)
I assume you’re joking, but θεωρίᾱ does mean a “looking at” or “a beholding” or “contemplation” from the verb θεωρέω, “to look at” or “observe.” Aristotle liked to use it for speculation or “theorizing” in the mental sense, but apparently that was due to Pythagoras’s influence.
Checked my Bolchazy-Carducci reprint of Crosby and Schaeffer, and they do indeed immediately gloss θεωρίᾱ as “review.”
Checked my Bolchazy-Carducci reprint of Crosby and Schaeffer, and they do indeed immediately gloss θεωρίᾱ as “review.”
Yes, "I want to propose a theory" literally means "I want to propose a way of looking at things", or "I want to propose a viewpoint".
Well, I'm glad I read these comments rather than trumpeting my new found knowledge of Greek particles to all and sundry. You have my thanks.
I really wish English had something like Greek ge, which is something like a sarcasm/snark marker. Socrates uses it a lot.
Oh, but English does have a sarcasm marker! It's just not a word, instead it's typically marked by using non-standard pronunciation like creaky voice or lengthening vowels. The problem is of course that this stuff doesn't have an orthography, thus the use of stuff like /s online.
Is it really a sarcasm marker? I've always thought it's equivalent to že in Slavic languages (both probably from the same PIE *g(h)e), and in those languages, it can be used sarcastically, but its main meaning is 'in fact', 'as for X'. For example in Russian: on že glup = 'he is, in fact, a fool' or 'as for him, he's a fool - didn't you know?' Similarly, dictionaries translate the Greek ge as 'in fact, indeed.' If you mentally replace most instances of Ancient Greek ge with the Slavic že in Greek texts, it all starts making a lot of sense (if you're a speaker of a Slavic language).
P.S. There's also a limiting sense in the dictionary, with the example given:
P.S. There's also a limiting sense in the dictionary, with the example given:
Greek: ho de ge (+ participle)
Russian: tot že (kto)
English: but the one (who)[deleted]
The range of meanings for the Greek entautha, gar, and de are all well-understood.