Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 June 5

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June 5

Greek "agou"

I have been expanding our Agoonoree article - it's a camp for Scouts with special needs. The origin of the name, according to a 1960s Scouting source, is the Greek word agou, apparently meaning a "meeting or competition". Two questions: 1) does this word actually exist in Greek and does it mean what the source claims? 2) How is it transliterated into the Greek alphabet? Alansplodge (talk) 00:20, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The Greek word is αγων (or with full diacritics, ἀγών), Wiktionary entry https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%B3%CF%8E%CE%BD ... AnonMoos (talk) 03:49, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks AnonMoos, so it was true. There is much story-telling within Scouting and the origin of things often gets embellished beyond recognition, but happily not in this case. Alansplodge (talk) 12:16, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Resolved

Use of Latin and written Chinese in various societies

The Roman Empire occupied land from Western Europe to Eastern Europe. But somehow, Western European countries inherit the use of Latin letters, and Eastern European countries use Cyrillic? How did Cyrillic evolve? Wikipedia says that Cyrillic is derived from Greek, but ancient Greece was conquered by the Roman Empire. Though, the Romans seemed to have a preference of adopting Greek ways. Why isn't Latin used there? In other words, why does Eastern European writing look differently from Western European writing literally? Also, did the conquered countries of the Roman Empire have writing systems of their own? I remember reading from Wikipedia one time that Japan had no writing system before the adoption of Chinese logograms; and this system of Chinese writing became imported to Japan, and the Japanese made writing systems from the original Chinese script. I first became aware that Koreans also use Chinese characters when I conversed with a fellow student, who just happened to be a Korean international student and told me that she had a Korean name (presumably in Hangul) and a Chinese name (presumably in Hanzi). Then, I looked it up on Wikipedia and realized that Koreans did write in Classical Chinese script, alongside native phonetic Korean scripts. I don't know how did the Japanese or Koreans adopt Classical Chinese script in East Asia, as much as I don't know how the Romance-language countries and Germanic-language countries adopt Latin, while Eastern European countries use Cyrillic (they all look like funky letters to me, and I presume they are Cyrillic because I know Russian uses Cyrillic and lots of other Eastern European countries appear to have the same kind of funky letters). 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:45, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Your statement in your second sentence is demonstratably wrong, so any questions based on it are unanswerable. There are at least TWO major problems with the statement. 1) The eastern part of the Roman Empire used Koine Greek as a lingua franca and not Latin. Indeed, even in the city of Rome itself, even before the formal formation of the Roman Empire. Greek, and not Latin, was the status language (Julius Caesar was quoted as having said "καὶ σὺ, τέκνον" as his last words...) Secondly, in the parts of the Eastern Empire that did speak Latin, they use the Latin Alphabet, i.e. Romania (formerly Dacia). The Cyrillic script developed outside of the Roman Empire, and was not used within it. The first Cyrillic Alphabet was used by the First Bulgarian Empire, the Bulgars being a Turko-slavic people who had not historical connection to the Roman Empire, except that they grabbed some land from it. I don't know where else to go with your questions based on that, because it's entirely based on wrong premises. --Jayron32 03:18, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

My first sentence is supposed to be about the past. My second sentence is supposed to be about the present. I think that part is unclear. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:22, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but it's WRONG, because the Cyrillic alphabet is mostly not used in lands that were part of the Roman Empire. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, NONE of those were part of the Roman Empire, and to what extent lands like Bulgaria, Serbia, and Bosnia were ever part of the Roman Empire, they weren't when Cyrillic was invented. Your presumption that those people SHOULD have used Latin is wrong on so many levels, it is hard to know where to start correcting it. --Jayron32 04:26, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I think I should have just said specific languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, English, Danish, Finnish, etc.) use the Latin the script; and Russia uses the Cyrillic script. Okay, fine. Roman people spoke Greek then. Then, somehow that Greek turned into Latin, which then turned into Romance languages. English probably got Latin words because of the Norman conquest. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The Greek language did not evolve into Latin -- they belong to separate branches of Indo-European... AnonMoos (talk) 04:41, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Greek never turned into Latin, Latin as she was spoke in the Roman Empire was the language of the common people (see Vulgar Latin) in the Western Roman Empire. The Roman aristocracy spoke a more formal form of Latin known as Classical Latin, and also used Greek as a "status language", in the same way that, for example, the Russian upper class used French during the 18th and 19th century. Classical and Vulgar Latin had some small influence from Greek, but it mainly evolved from languages spoken in and around Rome prior to the formation of the Roman Republic, i.e. the language of Latium. English used the Latin alphabet from well before the conquest; at least in part, there were two competing scripts in use among Germanic peoples at the time, the Runic script and the Latin Script; though by the time of Old English the Latin Script was mostly in use; with the exception of a few runes that hung on (like thorn). --Jayron32 04:49, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

50.4.236.254 -- the Cyrillic alphabet was invented (as a successor to the Glagolitic alphabet) mainly for religious purposes, and from the medieval period down to the 19th century, there was a strong association in Europe between alphabet and religion: Catholic and Protestant countries tended to write in the Latin alphabet, while Orthodox countries wrote in the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. This still continues to some degree, though Romanian switched from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet to align itself with the other Romance languages... AnonMoos (talk) 04:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

By the way, the Greek, Cyrillic, and Latin alphabets are close enough in visual appearance that some letters have basically the same appearance and sound value in all three ("ATOM" etc.), and some of the same typographic concepts (such as serifs and so on) apply to all three. There are many computer fonts which contain characters of all three alphabets, and try to present a unified visual appearance for them. AnonMoos (talk) 04:29, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

P.S. The use of Chinese characters in the current-day South Korean writing of the Korean language is more ostentatious than practically functional, while they've been eliminated from the North Korean writing of the Korean language. AnonMoos (talk) 04:09, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

How did the common people of Europe do business or accounting then? And writing legal documents? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:22, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The common people of Europe were largely illiterate; accounting was often done by the method of loci, which is also known as the "mind palace". James Burke has a great explanation of how it worked in his series The Day the Universe Changed. Legal documents were written in the lingua franca of the local region, for Western Europe this was usually Latin, though for other regions it would have been others. Most common people operated by oral contract, it is unlikely they would have even been able to read their local vernacular in any meaningful way, never mind Latin or Greek or Old Church Slavonic or whatever. --Jayron32 04:39, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

That depends on what period you are talking about. And the idea that "English got Latin words through the Norman conquest" is so oversimplified as to be meaningless. There was already borrowing from Latin into Old English, and Latin was the language of law and government. That continued after the Norman conquest, but the important factor was that the Normans spoke a variety of French. So educated people had to be trilingual in English, French and Latin. The final very important factor is the use of Latin for scientific purposes. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:43, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

A lot of confusion and misconceptions from the OP. Let us crack it one by one:

1) The original ancient Latin alphabet was derived from the Etruscan alphabet which in turn was derived from the West Greek alphabet which in turn was derived from the Phoenician alphabet. So it must be noted that the Eastern part of the future Roman empire was more developed, at least in the question of writing.

2) Latin was originally spoken only in the region of Latium. Its spreading was due to conquests and assimilation. It first started from the Italian peninsula, but as the conquest went further west, many "barbarian" tribes of modern Western Europe (France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, England) were assimilated as well. One explanation why those western parts were much easier to assimilate may be their much lower level of social, cultural and economic development comparing with Rome and Italy. Thus they easily adopted the Roman way of life and hence the language and the alphabet.

3) When the Romans started their conquest in the east they met quite a different picture. Most countries there have rich and ancient cultures which in many ways were superior to the Roman one. Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria and Palestine - all had had a rich history long before the Roman empire even had started. So there were no objective reasons to assimilate all those countries and people into the Roman culture - it was quite the opposite, the Romans adopted a lot from the Greek and Eastern cultures. The only exception was the land in the Balkan peninsula to the north of Greece, where there lived many barbarian tribes and which had experienced the Roman influence as well as the Greek one. This explains why today there are Romance languages in the Balkans, including the extinct ones (Dalmatian).

4) As time went by the western and the eastern parts developed their own ways and finally split up.

5) At they same time the Great Migration started and various previously little known tribes (particularly Germanic tribes in the West and Slavonic tribes in the East) began their migrations. In many parts it was a success, and this is why we now have Germanic-speaking Britain and most of Eastern Europe is Slavic-speaking.

6) This division continued while those two parts followed their historical ways. But then very soon they started to convert the neighbouring pagan tribes into Christianity.

7) Finally, we've got to out alphabetic division. A big role played geography. It was much easier to send missionaries to Germany and Britain from Italy than from Greece. And the opposite: it was easier to send missionaries to Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia from Greece than from Italy. As we remember the West wrote and spoke Latin, and the East wrote and spoke Greek, hence whose were the missionaries that was the alphabet.

8) A note about Cyrillic. It was not developed from the Ancient Greek alphabet, but was artificiality invented by a group of Slavic-speaking Greek missionaries. Ancient Cyrillic absolutely perfectly imitated the forms of the Greek writing of the period (9th-10th c. AD). And this tradition continued for centuries in all the countries which were converted to the Greek Christianity. Even including the Romance-speaking areas (Romanian was formerly written in Cyrillic before the 19th century). Only in the 1700s Russian tsar Peter the Great decided to reform the Cyrillic alphabet and make it look like Latin. But just to look. Most Cyrillic letters have preserved their phonetic values despite the change of their shapes. And due to the Russian influence this new modified script (known also as the "civic script") has found its way into other countries like Bulgaria and Serbia. At the same time the Romanians decided to switch to the Latin alphabet. But this was only because the Romanians, despite their Eastern Greek Christianity, spoke a Romance language and wanted to be culturally with other Romance-speaking countries. There have been no reasons for others (Russians, Bulgarians, Serbians, etc.) to break their millennium old tradition and switch to the Latin alphabet.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:53, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The word for "Christian"

From a semantic point of view, the English word for "Christian" - derives from the Greek word for "anointed", and so it does in many other European languages - including Greek itself. However, the word for "Christian" in Hindi Pashto and Urdu - derives from a Muslim prophet's name called "Isa" (what this name basically means is a matter of controversy), whereas the Arabic word for "Christian" - derives from the Hebrew word for "anointed" - and so it does in some other languages influenced by Arabic, while the Hebrew word for "Christian" - derives from "Nazareth", whereas the Chinese word for "Christian" - derives from "basic governer". The Korean word for "Christian" is 독교 ("dog-gyo") 기독 (gi-dog), but I'm not sure what it's intended to mean. Does the word for "Christian", in any other language, derive from any other semantic origin? HOTmag (talk) 11:57, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The Arabic word for "Christian" doesn't derive from the Hebrew word, but from the equivalent word in Aramaic, the language of the first Christians. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 13:18, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Our article Christ claims (in footnote #1), that both the Greek word "Christos" (meaning "anointed") and the correspondent Aramaic word (meaning the same), semantically derive from the correspondent Hebrew word (meaning the same and phonetically very similar to the Aramaic word). HOTmag (talk) 21:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Footnote #1 says calqued from Hebrew: māšîaḥ referencing http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=messiah which actually says from Aramaic (Semitic) meshiha and Hebrew mashiah. The reference doesn't claim ultimate Hebrew origin, so I'm now going to edit the footnote to match the reference it cites. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 08:59, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

212.235.66.73 -- The first Christians spoke Judean and/or Galilean Aramaic, which belongs to the subgrouping of Aramaic languages now called "Western Aramaic" by linguists, while Aramaic Christian scriptures (the Diatessaron etc.) are in forms of the Syriac language, which belongs to the subgrouping of Aramaic languages now called "Western Aramaic" by linguists. This important distinction is now obscured among some advocates of Aramaic primacy. For Arabic terms see List of Christian terms in Arabic... AnonMoos (talk) 22:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

AnonMoos, so what is your point? The first Christians spoke a different variety of Aramaic from the one used in the Aramaic Christian scriptures -- how does it follow that Arabs took the term for Christ not from Aramaic but from Hebrew? And how is the List of Christian terms in Arabic relevant? It doesn't claim either Aramaic or Hebrew origin for any of the terms listed there. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 06:18, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

The point is that https://arc.wikipedia.org/ is the Syriac Wikipedia, but "the first Christians" did not speak a form of Syriac, so your link was potentially misleading. You may have added it with the best of intentions, but some advocates of "Aramaic primacy" deliberately blur such distinctions. AnonMoos (talk) 08:59, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Now I see what you mean. Since https://arc.wikipedia.org/ is the only Aramaic Wikipedia that there is, I didn't have much choice about where to link to. In any case, the term in question (ܡܫܝܚܝܐ / משיחיא‎) would be the same across the varieties of Aramaic, except for the script they would use to write it down. --212.235.66.73 (talk) 10:55, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

As to your original question: Farsi seems to have three equivalent words for "Christian": the Hebrew-derived one (نصرانی), the Aramaic-via-Arabic-derived one (مسیحی), and one unique to Farsi (ترسا) which according to Google Translate means "fearful". --212.235.66.73 (talk) 13:30, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. HOTmag (talk) 21:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The Chinese for "Christian" does not mean "basic governor" - that would be an over-literal reading. The two characters for Christ (基督) could individually mean "base" and "supervise", but together they are used for their phonetic values to transliterate "Christos". The usual word for "Christian", 基督徒, adds a character meaning "follower", so the whole means "follower of Christ". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:34, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Anyways, I couldn't imagine that Jidu (in Pinyin) is intended to sound "Christos". HOTmag (talk) 21:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The sound is closer in other varieties of Chinese, and Wiktionary says in Middle Chinese the two characters would have been pronounced /kɨtuok̚/, which is closer to "Christos". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:19, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Upon some further research, it looks like 基督 is a shortening of 基利斯督, which was the full or original transliteration of "Christos". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:26, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

What debate over the meaning of Jesus/Isa? Our article doesn't seem to mention one: Jesus#Etymology. Rmhermen (talk) 19:46, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

It's not clear whether the Arabic word "Isa" derives from the word "Jesus". See Isa. HOTmag (talk) 21:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I haven't kept up with that article in quite a while (see past discussions at Talk:Isa (name), and especially the talk page archives1,2), but the Muslim form of the name in Arabic is quite bizarre in that all the main elements of 1st century A.D. Hebrew and/or Judean/Galilean Aramaic /yēšūʕ/ are more or less present in Qur'anic Arabic /ʕīsā/ (the š–s correspondence can be explained, and is actually evidence of a relatively early borrowing into Arabic), but the voiced pharyngeal `Ayn consonant has very strangely moved from the end of the word to the beginning. People who don't know a Semitic language are sometimes inclined to underestimate pharyngeals and glottal stops, which are often transcribed into the Latin alphabet as small apostrophe-like symbols, but in the grammar of older or more conservative Semitic languages, such sounds act as full consonants with respect to the root system etc. AnonMoos (talk) 23:10, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

It seems that you agree with me. I wrote "it's not clear", because of the strange movement of the Ayn. Theoretically, such a metathesis is possible, but it's unlikely. HOTmag (talk) 08:13, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

The only remotely plausible source that anyone has been able to adduce with an initial pharyngeal is the name "Esau", but that would be even stranger than the mysterious voiced pharyngeal consonant leap... AnonMoos (talk) 22:27, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't claim to be fluent in Korean, but I would interpret the Korean you gave (독교) as coming from hanja 毒敎 "poison religion". The only Korean word I've heard for "Christian" is 신자 ("believer").--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 20:41, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. HOTmag (talk) 21:38, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Are you sure you have not miscopied 기독교 (note first character), gidoggyo, which is Korean for "Christianity"? 기독, Christ, is the same word as Chinese 基督. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:23, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I meant 기독 (gidog). Are you sure it doesn't also mean "Christian" (besides "Christ")? HOTmag (talk) 09:43, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't know enough Korean to say definitely one way or the other, but it would seem odd if the word for "Christ" is the same as the word for "Christian". What makes you think that is the case? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:38, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Check 기독 on GoogleTranslator. HOTmag (talk) 10:48, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I see, that seems odd. Wiktionary would suggest that "기독교도" is "Christian" (as in a Christian believer). --165.225.80.115 (talk) 14:47, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Phonemic ae-tensing; can (container) versus can (modal verb)

I had the notion that some East Coast accents distinguish the word can "metal container" from can "is able to" via ae-tensing, but I can't remember which way it goes, assuming this is correct in the first place. Our article doesn't mention it, though it does have a line for the "container" meaning. Is this a real thing? --Trovatore (talk) 21:28, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Personal observation; there is some distinction in my use of the two words, "is able to" can be pronounced either /kæn/ or /kən/, while the metal container never has the schwa version in my speech (that is, it is ONLY /kæn/). That is, I would say "I /kən/ do it" or "I /kæn/ do it" depending on emphasis, but I would never say "open a /kən/ of peas", it's ONLY "open a /kæn/ of peas". I'm not sure where to look for more references, for which I admit to my shortcomings here, and apologize for straying into the personal, but linguistics is funny that way, and I can (ha, get it) report that in at least one case, there is a difference between the two words. --Jayron32 03:01, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

As a PS, since you mentioned East Coast accents, except for a brief 2 years, I have always lived on the East Coast of the U.S., my native accent is New England English, but it has mostly drifted towards General American, with a few phonemic and lexical "hangers on" from my youth in New England. --Jayron32 03:03, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

That's not "tensing" as I understand it. You're just using a reduced vowel in fast speech for the modal verb. It might be related, though; maybe the tense /æ/ is less susceptible to reduction. --Trovatore (talk) 03:42, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

• I natively (Delaware Valley accent) have this distinction, and "the can" and "half two" are always tense and unreduced, while "he can" and "have to" are lax and may be relaxed. The verb "can" (as well as an, many, catch and several other words are often expressed with the "get" vowel in colloquial speech. "Bad" is also tense, while "glad" is lax, which indicates a minimal pair, not a conditioned allophone. μηδείς (talk) 03:26, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Thanks, Medeis and Jayron. --Trovatore (talk) 08:30, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

How to quote this incomplete sentence?

I'm been waffling on how to best deal with the missing "of" with this quote: "in his day one the Lusophone world’s most famous architects". I wrote "in his day one [of] the Lusophone world’s most famous architects", but I could have writen "in his day one the Lusophone world’s most famous architects"[sic]. The first option seems fine to me and clues in and helps out the reader sooner, but the second option seems more formal and fine too, so I'm not sure which is best. Are both options OK or is there any other way to handle this that is even better? Thanks in advance. --Modocc (talk) 22:20, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Here's what Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Original wording has to say:

Where there is good reason to change the wording, enclose changes within square brackets (for example, [her father] replacing him, where the context identifying "him" is not included in the quotation: "Ocyrhoe told [her father] his fate"). If there is a significant error in the original statement, use [sic] or the template {{sic}} to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia. However, trivial spelling and typographic errors should simply be corrected without comment (for example, correct basicly to basically and harasssment to harassment), unless the slip is textually important.

I don't find the second option (no 'of' whatsoever) very easy to parse and keep stumbling over "in his day one". I'd choose either "one of the" or "one [of] the"---Sluzzelin talk 23:14, 5 June 2017 (UTC)