Category: Languages

Girl Talk?

I was intrigued today when I saw a news story on the web about Nushu, billed as a language used only by women in China. As y’all know, I’m fascinated by languages, and the idea of a women’s-only language is especially intriguing, as it’s most unusual. In fact, the article’s author wrote that Nushu is "believed to be the world’s only female-specific language." If that were true, Nushu would be really cool!

Unfortunately, I’m afraid that this article needs to be filed in the "reporter doesn’t know what he/she’s talking about" file. My experience with the press has convinced me that the great majority of reporters have only the most superficial understanding of what they are writing about, but I had hoped that on The Discovery Channel’s web site (where the story appears), they would be able to get the basic facts of the story related to the science of linguistics right.

Yet as I read the article, my suspicions began to grow that Nushu was not, in fact, a language. According to the article, "The language’s origins are unclear, but most scholars believe Nushu emerged in the third century during a time when the Chinese government prohibited education of women." The reporter’s implication would seem to be that Chinese women came up with their own language in response to the education edict.

The third century is certainly old enough to have a language develop. English didn’t develop until five hundred to a thousand years after that, depending on what you’re willing to count as English. But though the time frame for Nushu is fine, the implied method of its origin is all wrong.

I can think of ways that one might get a women’s-only language, but that isn’t one of them. As to how one could arise, suppose that there was a language in general use in a society at one point and then began to be supplanted by a new language. Suppose also that this society had a female priesthood that preserved the old language in their sacred rites. In this way, you would develop a women’s-only language. In fact, one could argue that at a certain stage of European history, Latin could have turned into a men’s-only language, though in reality there were always women who knew it (e.g., nuns who prayed in Latin and the daughters of educated noblemen, like St. Thomas More’s daughter Margaret).

But think: Why would the women of China invent a language just because they were prohibited from getting an education? It’s not very plausible. How would such a language help them? Would they conduct covert classes in it? But then if they could conduct covert classes, why would they need a special language to do them in? It would seem to only add another barrier to the education process, first forcing people to learn a new language before teaching them anything else.

In order to have a language–as opposed to a code–one needs a vocabulary of at least 5000 words (and even that is an incredibly restrictive vocabulary that many linguists might say is not enough for a true language). Such a restrictive vocabulary would not be enough to allow one to conduct classes without using lots of loan-words for technical subject vocabulary, and if women were heard using such loan words, the men would know what they were up to when speaking in Nushu.

These and other problems (which I won’t go into lest this entry get too long) made me begin to strongly suspect that Nushu is not a language at all, but either a code with a teensy tincey vocabulary or–more likely–a script (writing system).

A script is not a language, it’s simply a way of reducing a language to written form. A language can be represented in many scripts (or by none if it is an unwritten language). Though in English we’re used to using an alphabet based on the Latin script, there is no reason why that needs to be the case. For example, here are three English sentences written in scripts that I have handy on my computer:

Each of these sentences says "This is an English sentence written in __________", with the name of the script filled in (respectively, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic). If you want to try and figure out what character corresponds to what letter, remember that Hebrew and Aramaic read right-to-left instead of left-to-right. (Hey, maybe future data-archaeologists mining the Old Web will run across this page and the above will serve as a Rosetta Stone to unlock the meaning of lost languages!)

It would make a lot more sense for women in China to develop their own script than their own language. Scripts can be much smaller and thus easier to create and learn than languages. Logographic scripts (like normal Chinese) are truly huge, with thousands of characters, but you can make them much, much smaller. An alphabetic script (where each character stands for a sound) may only be two or three dozen characters. A syllabaric script (where each character represents a syllable) might be a few dozen or hundred characters.

Checking a few web sites about Nushu, I found that they regularly described Nushu as a script, apparently a primarily syllabaric one with about 700 signs. I haven’t looked into it enough to tell, but it seems that Nushu may be a mixed script, incorporating some logograms (characters that stand for words). In this respect, it may be like Egyptian hieroglyphics, which is also a mixed script with about the same number of characters.

If you’d like to see some examples of Nushu writing, see here. Also, Wikipedia has a good but brief article on Nushu. Both make the point that the name Nushu means "women’s writing," an admission I note on second reading is made even in The Discovery Channel article.

So, unfortunately, we don’t have a true example of a women’s language in Nushu, but we can still admire the inventiveness of Chinese women in coming up with their own multi-hundred-character script. Let’s hope that linguists are able to fully preserve it!

BTW, for any men who are reading this:

Gwon-ca tobbishla Nu’a’mari ex-locsishin-wa tet calculus-lu da astronomy-lu gwon-wa ito’ilu.

Learning Jesus’ Native Language

I’m getting a number of requests these days, inspired by the movie The Passion of the Christ, for language learning resources for Aramaic.

I’ll be happy to oblige to the extent that I can, but unfortunately there aren’t a lot of good resources out there, especially for self-teaching. The problem is that there isn’t a lot of demand for knowing Aramaic in this country, and so few resources have been developed. Many of the resources that do exist can be expensive and often presuppose that you already know Hebrew, since in biblical studies one usually learns Aramaic after one already knows Hebrew.

There’s just a dearth of good, self-teaching Aramaic resources. I’m hoping to help correct this with several projects that I have in the works, but they aren’t close to being ready yet.

What I generally recommend in the meantime is that someone who wants a little exposure to Aramaic get a copy of Classical Aramaic: Book 1 by Rocco Errico and Fr. Michael J. Bazzi. This is published in workbook format, so it’s suitable for self-study, and it is very basic, so it won’t be too hard. It will teach you how to read the Eastern Aramaic script  and give you about a hundred word vocabulary, with many of the terms related to the faith.

Now, let me pose a question to you, the reader: Just how interested are you in learning Aramaic? Would you be interested, for example, in a two or three tape set that taught you how to both say the Rosary in Aramaic and understand it? How interested would you be in similar sets for saying the Rosary in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew? Would you like to use it for yourself or with your homeschool kids or your study group? If you have thoughts on any of these questions, e-mail me. I’m doing a little market research. (And note: This isn’t one of the secret projects. Those are still secret.)

Learning Jesus' Native Language

I’m getting a number of requests these days, inspired by the movie The Passion of the Christ, for language learning resources for Aramaic.

I’ll be happy to oblige to the extent that I can, but unfortunately there aren’t a lot of good resources out there, especially for self-teaching. The problem is that there isn’t a lot of demand for knowing Aramaic in this country, and so few resources have been developed. Many of the resources that do exist can be expensive and often presuppose that you already know Hebrew, since in biblical studies one usually learns Aramaic after one already knows Hebrew.

There’s just a dearth of good, self-teaching Aramaic resources. I’m hoping to help correct this with several projects that I have in the works, but they aren’t close to being ready yet.

What I generally recommend in the meantime is that someone who wants a little exposure to Aramaic get a copy of Classical Aramaic: Book 1 by Rocco Errico and Fr. Michael J. Bazzi. This is published in workbook format, so it’s suitable for self-study, and it is very basic, so it won’t be too hard. It will teach you how to read the Eastern Aramaic script  and give you about a hundred word vocabulary, with many of the terms related to the faith.

Now, let me pose a question to you, the reader: Just how interested are you in learning Aramaic? Would you be interested, for example, in a two or three tape set that taught you how to both say the Rosary in Aramaic and understand it? How interested would you be in similar sets for saying the Rosary in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew? Would you like to use it for yourself or with your homeschool kids or your study group? If you have thoughts on any of these questions, e-mail me. I’m doing a little market research. (And note: This isn’t one of the secret projects. Those are still secret.)

And Speaking of Greek . . . (Hilasterion)

Another reader writes:

I’m having trouble developing a Catholic view of a debate the occurred amongst protestant biblical scholars over the proper translation of the greek word "hilasterion." C.H. Dodd argued that it should be translated as "expiation," conveying that Christ’s death covers or removes our sins. He disputed the translation of the greek word as "propitiation" which conveyed that Christ’s death appeased the wrath of God, a concept he found to be typical of pagan religions but inappropriately applied to New Testament thought.

It seems that some modern translations have since shyied away from "propitiation," including the New American Bible which uses the word "expiation" for all occurrences of "hilasterion," and the New Revised Standard Version uses the phrase "sacrifice of atonement."

I was beginning to think likewise until I recalled that the Council of Trent affirmed the theology behind the word "propitiation." When the Council defined the Sacrifice of the Mass it stated, "this sacrifice is truly propitiatory,…For the Lord, appeased by this oblation grants grace…" (DS 1743). So it appears that the Church confirms the concept of propitiation, in the sense of appeasing God’s wrath, even though the NAB and the NRSV avoid using this word. But I haven’t been able to find any contemporary Catholic literature on the matter. Could you please comment or advise?

This question has to be handled on two levels, the linguistic and the theological. Since I haven’t seen what Dodd said, I can’t speak directly to that, but let’s talk about the position you described.

It is very risky to mix linguistic and theological arguments in the way you described. Too often people let their theological commitments govern how they read the linguistic evidence, and this can lead them astray, even out of the best of motives (and even if their theology happens to be correct). The proper procedure is to try to first establish what the text says on purely linguistic grounds (or as near to pure as one can get) and then try to establish what it means theologically.

Linguistically, when hilasterion is used as a noun (it can also be an adjective), it appears to mean "propitiation" or "appeasement" (like its cognate noun, hilasmos). Abbott-Smith (who I just recommended, above) doesn’t list "expiation" as a possible meaning (though some newer dictionaries may, possibly through the influence of Dodd and others of the same mindset).

I wouldn’t appeal to this as a rock-solid conclusion, however, for several reasons: (1) Before doing so I want to check a bunch of dictionaries, including highly technical ones, (2) I’d want to dig into the original sources that the dictionaries and concordances reference to see if the word is regularly used in a way that would exclude "expiation" as a likely meaning, and (3) we often at this late date simply cannot tell the precise nuance a word is being given.

It’s clear that when Paul describes Jesus as a hilasterion (e.g., Rom. 3:25) that he means that it is through Jesus that the consequences of our sins are removed. That much is obvious. But the precise nuance he wants to give the term is far less obvious, whether it is the idea of turning away or satisfying wrath (propitiation/appeasement) or making amends (expiation) or something else. To establish the latter nuance with certainty, a lot of careful scholarly work would have to be done, and a completely satisfying answer might not be attainable due either to a lack of linguistic evidence or ambiguity in the evidence.

Nevertheless, let’s go with the understanding that hilasterion and its cognate terminology should primarily be understood in terms of turning away or satisfying wrath. Though I can’t document it the way I’d like at the moment, this seems to me to be the likely understanding of the nuance Paul wishes to call to mind.

Having dealt with the linguistic level, let’s kick it up to the theological level. What does propitiation mean theologically? Those who would argue that the idea taken literally is more suited to pagan than to Christian theology are correct. Pagan deities might literally feel passions like anger, but Christian theological had established long before the time of Trent that God does not literally have passions (see Aquinas on this point). As a result, when God is described as being angry or hating something, such as sin, there is a figurative component to the language (again, see Aquinas on this point).

When people sin, God is not literally burning with anger, because his infinite beatitude cannot be diminished by what creatures do. Instead, as Aquinas and Catholic theology in general points out (see Ott’s discussion of this), Scripture and the Magisterium are using language with a figurative component when they speak in this way.

The same component is present when the language of propitiation is used with regard to God. To say that God has been propitiated does not mean that he has stopped burning with anger (something he was not doing in the first place) but that the person now will not experience the painful consequences of sin that he otherwise would have experienced. The sacrifice of the Mass, by bringing about this state of affairs by applying the fruits of Christ’s sacrifice, is thus propitiatory.

What Trent was concerned to do was to repudiate Protestant hypotheses that tried to explain the Mass as a sacrifice of thanksgiving only and not one that put away sin. It was not trying to establish more precisely the concept of propitiation and relied on the understanding of it that Catholic theology had already worked out (e.g., as in Aquinas and the scholastics).

So, bottom line, from what I can tell without extensive digging into the linguistic evidence, I’d probably translate the hilasterion passages with propitiation/appeasement-related terms but then in commentaries or homilies (if I were a priest or deacon) explain what these mean theologically.

The Greek New Testament

A reader from Australia writes:

I am studying Latin and am interested in studying Greek also. I though you would be the one to ask for a recommendation of a good, Catholic Greek Bible. Are there any differences (e.g. Catholic/non-Catholic) in the many Greek editions of Scripture? Also, I think I remember you recommending the book on Biblical Greek by William Mounce. Is that right? Have you any other recommendations for a beginner?

The differences between Catholic and Protestant Bibles in the original languages are essentially confined to the Old Testament. There is not a dispute over the Greek text of the New Testament between the two groups. Both Catholic scholars and Protestant scholars (which is to say, leaving aside Catholic Douay-Rheims Onlyists and Protestant King James Onlyists) face the same set of options in determining the best readings for particular passages, and the discussion is not polarized along confessional lines.

For your purposes–learning to read in the Greek New Testament–more or less any edition will do. I wouldn’t even turn you away from one of the Textus Receptus editions for basic learning to read purposes (though these editions are not as accurate as contemporary ones done after the advent of New Testament textual scholarship). The standard version that most scholars, Catholic and Protestant, work from is the United Bible Societies/Nestle-Aland text.

Here is an inexpensive, leather-bound edition put out by the American Bible Society.

As far as textbooks to learn from, yes, I recommend Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek. It is the best text currently on the market, bar none. (At least until I get around to finishing mine, which is going to be some time, especially with Secret Project #1 filling up my schedule in the interim.) You also need the workbook that goes with it. If you want to get Mounce’s own lectures on tape or CD to self-study with, you can order them from his website.

Two dictionaries that I recommend are:

  • I also recommend Mounce’s Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament, which is an excellent dictionary that parses each word found in the New Testament to help you figure out troublesome word forms.
  • And I highly recommend A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament by George Abbott-Smith, which is an excellent older dictionary that gives references to word usage in extra-NT sources and tries to supply the Hebrew equivalent of NT Greek terms.

For those not ready to take the plunge into learning Greek, but who would like to get a little exposure to it (enough to use Greek NT-related study tools, such as the dictionaries I just recommended), I recommend Mounce’s Greek for the Rest of Us.

Hope these do for now. I’m working on a permalink page for this site in which I’ll give a bunch more language resource recommendations. I also have a couple of articles on the subject coming out in the July-August and September issues of This Rock.

Good luck in your studies! New Testament Greek is an easy and rewarding language to learn!