Category: Languages

A reader writes:

As a recent reader of your (extremely interesting and original) site, I’ve noticed that you have some knowledge of Aramaic.  Could you answer some questions I’ve had since viewing the movie "The Passion of the Christ"?

What would be the spoken and written Aramaic form of "Jesus of Nazareth"? In the movie it seemed it was pronounced with slight variations by different characters, such as "Yeshua n’Zaret", or "Yeshua an’Zaret" or "Yehsua m’Zaret" (I writing this phonetically from memory, so please forgive the mistakes).  I realize that spelling and pronounciation can change as to a word’s function and place in a sentence, but if one wanted to say or write simply, "Jesus of Nazareth" in Aramaic, seperate from any place in a spoken or written phrase, what would it be?

The phenomenon of actors pronouncing the name differently is caused by the fact that the actors in the movie weren’t native speakers of the language and, so I understand, didn’t even speak it as a second language. Thus their own accents tend to bleed through into their delivery of Aramaic.

I should also mention that there were no standardized dictionaries in the ancient world and folks tended to spell words more like they sounded to them, so you’ll get variant spellings from time to time.

As to how Jesus’ name is pronounced, that’s going to change over time and region. Just as we have different accents in English, they have different accents (pronunciation schemes) in Aramaic, and words can sound significantly different depending on where and when an accent was based.

In the first century, Galilee and Judea had different accents, as we know because Peter’s northern (Galilean) accent accent gave him down south in Jerusalem, when he was at the high priest’s house. ("Yew ain’t from aroun’ these here parts, are ya, sir?") Even villages not that far apart (by modern standards) probably had different accents, like the Aramaic-speaking communities in Iraq do today (a Mosul accent ain’t the same as a Zakho accent, though they’re both in northern Iraq).

The best I can do is show you how "Jesus of Nazareth" is spelled in the Pshitta and tell you how that would be pronounced by a speaker with an eastern (Iraqi) Aramaic accent (i.e., the kind of Aramaic I’m most familiar with pronouncing), so here goes.

First, "Jesus of Nazareth" gets written different ways. Here’s how it’s written in Acts 2:22:

This is literally something like "Jesus the Nazarite." I’d transliterate it Isho` Nassraya. Pronounced in an Eastern accent, it’d be something like ee-SHOW-ah* naas-RYE-yah, but it’s hard to get across the exact sound because English does’t have two of the sounds that are used. That final character on Isho` (read from right-to-left) isn Aeh, which isn’t really like an English "ah" sound, which is why I starred it in the pronunciation. It’s a harsh gutteral sound that, to tell you the truth, sounds like you’re being choked, the airflow through the throat is cut off so abruptly. Make a kind of gutteral grunt choking noise and you’re about as close as you can get without hearing someone say it.

The other sound is easier. It’s the second character in Nassraya–the one that looks line of like a backwards Y. This letter is Sadhe (SAH-thay), and it’s a "dark S" sound. I doubled it in the transliteration to convey the idea that it in’t an ordinary S sound. Pronounce an S at the very back of your mouth (instead of at the front) and you’ve got it.

I checked some other passages as well, and the closest I found to something that’s literally "Jesus of Nazareth" was in Acts 10:38, where we find this:

Hyper-literally, this would be "Jesus of-from Nazareth," but nobody would translate it that way. "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus from Nazareth" would be the correct translation.

I’d transliterate it like this: Ishoa dmen Nassrath, and it’d be pronounced ee-SHOW-ah* dmen NAAS-rath. It’s hard for an American to pronounce dmen if you haven’t practiced, but just say the D really, really fast on the front of the word "men." Don’t forget the dark S in Nassrath, either.

The reader then asks:

Second, what would the name "Mary" be in Aramaic?  I’ve heard it is "Miriam", but in the movie, Mary Magadaline calls out, "Marian".  Which is it, if either?  Also, isn’t the Blessed Mother also addressed as "Emi", "Mother" in the movie?

This one is easy. "Mary" in Aramaic is Maryam, but you pronounce the R as a tap or flap R, creating a false pseudo-syllable between the R and the Y, making it sound a little like MAR-(ee)-yaam. Strive not to pronounce it with three syllables. That tap or flap R in the middle doesn’t give rise to a full syllable.

Here’s what it looks like:

Oh, and about "Mother," what he’s saying is emmi (pronounced EM-mee), which is literally "my mother." The word for "mother" is emma and the –i suffix functions as "my."

Now the reader asks:

Third, and perhaps the most lengthy, what would be the names of all of the Apostles in Aramaic.  The movie only gives us "Kepha" and "Yohanan".

Owww! Perhaps the most lengthy?

Okay glutton for punishmentobliging soul that I am, here are the names of the twelve apostles (plus a couple extra words I’ve circled for reasons that will become clear) taken from Matthew 10:2-4:

I would bore everyone to tears for me to give detailed pronunciation instructions for these, but here’s the gist:

1. Simon (Shem`on, shem-*on [it’s got that harsh Aeh sound in it])
2. Kepha (KAY-pha, though folks today pronounce it KAY-pah)
3. Andrew (Andareos, ahn-da-RAY-oss)
4. James (Ya`qob, YAH*-qobb [note: the two words that follow this are bar Zabday or "son of Zebedee")
5. John (Yohannan, yoh-HAN-nan)
6. Phillip (Pilipos, pih-LIP-poss)
7. Bartholomew (Bar Tolmay, bar TOL-may)
8. Thomas (Toma, TOE-mah)
9. Matthew (Mattay, matt-TAI)
10. James son of Alphaeus (Ya`qob bar Halpay, YAH*-qobb bar haal-PAI)
11. Thaddeus (Tadday, tad-DAI)
12. Simon the Cananaean (Shem`on Qananaya, shem-*ON qah-nah-NAI-yah)
13. Judas (Yhuda, yuh-HOO-dah)
14. Iscariot (Skaryota, skar-YO-tah)

Hope that helps! ‘Bout the best I can do on the fly, though I’m sure I could refine it if I had more time.

Again, I’m writing this from memory and phonetically with no real knowledge of Aramaic, so please forgive my mistakes.  Thanks for your help.

No prob! And I’m impressed at how well you’ve done picking up stuff by ear from the movie!

Analogies and metaphors supposedly found in high school essays:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

NOTE!: Add your own humorous metaphors and similies in the combox!

So the other day I was driving along in my pick-up truck, listening to country music, puffing my pipe, and thinking about Semitic languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, etc.).

Words in these languages tend to be built around roots that have three consonants, which then have a variety of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes shoved around and into them. (An infix is a affix that goes into a word, as you might imagine, instead of on the front or on the back, like a prefix or suffix.)

F’rinstance: the root K-T-B gets use in Semitic languages to make words like "write," "writing," "book," "bookkeeper," "library," etc.

‘Nuther instance: M-L-K gets used for a lot of royal words . . .

• In Hebrew the word for "king" is melek, in Aramaic it’s malka, and in Arabic it’s malik.
• In Hebrew the word for "queen" is malkah, in Aramaic it’s malktha, and in Arabic it’s malika.
• In Hebrew the word for "angel" or "messenger" (i.e., a messenger of the king or the heavenly King) is mal’ak, in Aramaic it’s malaka, and in Arabic it’s malaak.

So lots of M-L-K words denoting kings and king-related things in Semitic languages.

Which got me thinking about this guy:

America’s own M.L.K, or Martin Luther King.

Go fig.

A reader writes:

Hello Jimmy, I have recently started praying the Rosary in Latin. (only the Hail Mary) I have found with great joy this "method" is extremely awesome for me. I just need your personal opinion. THink that it is ok to say this prayer this way? I find that it add a liturgical sence to the devotion. Thanks in advance.

If I understand you correctly, you’re saying the Rosary with the Hail Mary in Latin and the other prayers in English, so it’s a bi-lingual Rosary.

There’s nothing wrong with that! There is no requirement that the Rosary all be said in one language. It’s a private devotion, and there is no single way in which it is to be said–a point John Paul II made in his apostolic letter on the Rosary. If it adds extra meaning to the prayer for you to say part of it in Latin, by all means do so!

Over time, you may even want to learn the other prayers of the Rosary in Latin so that you can say the whole thing in Latin if you wish.

One tweak in the language I suggest you use, though: Since the Rosary is a private devotion, it is not liturgical. Therefore, I’d describe saying part of it in Latin as adding a sense of "solemnity" or "ceremoniality" or "devotion" to your saying of the Rosary rather than a "liturgical" sense.

Hope this helps!

The Irish language may be all but dead in Ireland, but it is being kept alive at the University of Notre Dame (a school, I was surprised to learn, really doesn’t have Irish roots — despite its team’s famous nickname, "The Fighting Irish.")

"In Ireland, the Irish language is viewed by some affluent citizens as a peasant language that should be allowed to fade into oblivion.

"But at the University of Notre Dame, where students pay nearly $40,000 a year to attend, the little-used language is enjoying a renaissance.

"’There are a lot of kids here who are the grandchildren of the very successful and the very rich, and their grandparents were taught to forget about their Irish past,’ said Eamonn O Ciardha, program director at Notre Dame’s Keough Institute for Irish Studies. ‘They want to know about their language, they want to know about their history, they want to know about their culture.’"

Now all we have to do is to reintroduce Notre Dame’s students to their Catholic heritage and culture. Notre Dame does have some Catholic orthodoxy on campus — for a heartening example, check out The Shrine of the Holy Whapping, a blog run by a group of Notre Dame students — but certainly less than its fair share, as evidenced by this distressing article.

Let’s all pray that Notre Dame and other Catholic universities realize a resurgence of Slainte Mhath ("Good health"; pronounced "Slanzh’va").

A reader writes:

I’ve made a strong commitment to learn to read and write New Testament(Koine) Greek.  I also want to learn to speak Modern Greek because it seems that is the most useful to know of the variations.

What I’m unsure about is if I can learn to read Koine Greek but learn to speak Modern Greek without there being a conflict of understanding.

I’m willing to work very hard and desire learn as quick as possible, but don’t I know the best methods to learn.  How would you suggest to go about learning to read Koine Greek and speaking Modern Greek, assuming that they don’t conflict in that way.

Anything else that you think I would need to know please let me know.  I know you’re very busy and would greatly appreciate your help in this matter.  Thank you so much.

My standard recommend for learning New Testament Greek is Bill Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek (including the workbook). Best set out there. Lots of good ancillary study materials in the same line of books. Only major flaw is Mounce is too heavy on morphology.

For starting to learn Modern Greek, I recommend Pimsleur’s Greek set. (I only say starting because they only have 30 lessons in Modern Greek, so you have to switch to something else after that, but it’s still the best way to start studying it.)

Thing is, though: I wouldn’t recommend learning them at the same time. There are significant differences between the two dialects. Not only is the pronunciation quite different, the grammar is different, too. For example, modern Greek has no dative case (except in a few isolated expressions).

Learning one dialect will help you learn the other, but only in sequence. Try to learn both at once and it’ll be too confusing.

A reader writes:

I’ve made a strong commitment to learn to read and write New Testament(Koine) Greek.  I also want to learn to speak Modern Greek because it seems that is the most useful to know of the variations.

What I’m unsure about is if I can learn to read Koine Greek but learn to speak Modern Greek without there being a conflict of understanding.

I’m willing to work very hard and desire learn as quick as possible, but don’t I know the best methods to learn.  How would you suggest to go about learning to read Koine Greek and speaking Modern Greek, assuming that they don’t conflict in that way.

Anything else that you think I would need to know please let me know.  I know you’re very busy and would greatly appreciate your help in this matter.  Thank you so much.

My standard recommend for learning New Testament Greek is Bill Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek (including the workbook). Best set out there. Lots of good ancillary study materials in the same line of books. Only major flaw is Mounce is too heavy on morphology.

For starting to learn Modern Greek, I recommend Pimsleur’s Greek set. (I only say starting because they only have 30 lessons in Modern Greek, so you have to switch to something else after that, but it’s still the best way to start studying it.)

Thing is, though: I wouldn’t recommend learning them at the same time. There are significant differences between the two dialects. Not only is the pronunciation quite different, the grammar is different, too. For example, modern Greek has no dative case (except in a few isolated expressions).

Learning one dialect will help you learn the other, but only in sequence. Try to learn both at once and it’ll be too confusing.

A reader writes:

I am seriously considering pursuing a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology. I have a quick question. The programs I have looked at all have a language requirement. I have graduate degrees, in other fields; however, I have never taken any foreign languages. Now I am facing the task of becoming proficient enough to translate New Testament Greek, Latin and German (or French) with a dictionary. Do you have any recommendations of programs that I can begin preparing now? I am currently working on a MA in Theology and Christian Ministry (distance learning) from Franciscan University so I have some time to get ready. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you might have.

For living langauges like French and German, definitely Pimsleur.

For the biblical ones, SEE HERE and ALSO HERE.

Y’know how you sometimes run into maddeningly overused cliches in advertising?

For example, when was the last time you read a restaurant menu that described something as being made with "tomatoes"? That’s it: just "tomatoes."

I’m betting it’s been a while.

For Madisson Avenue has apparently decided that the word "tomatoes" cannot go unaccompanied. It must be chaperoned by two adjectives.

And not just any two adjecives. Saying "juicy, delicious tomatoes" ain’t enough. It has to be two specific adjectives: "red" and "ripe."

Yes, that’s right. Because of some evil adman sitting, cackling in his office somewhere, you now can no longer pick up a menu with a straight-forward description of a food as being made with "tomoatoes." It has to be "red ripe tomatoes."

Every.

Single.

Dang.

Time.

And that’s not the only ubiquitous advertising cliche. How about "farm fresh eggs," which is likely justifiable only in the sense that the eggs were at one time on a farm (likely an industrial farm) and they were at that time fresh. Now, they’ve been in cold storage for who knows how long, yet the evil adman wants you to believe that they have been whisked to your table fresh from under the hinder of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm’s favorite laying hen.

Restaurants aren’t the only place that use such deceptive cliches. How about when you’re at the end of a TV episode and the announcer tells you to watch some clips from next week’s "all new!" episode, despite the fact that next week’s episode is a clip show!

AAAAARGH!

<hyperbole>I think it’s time for Madison Avenue to get an "all new" vocabulary before I give an evil adman such a thumping with my "farm fresh" fists that he becomes a "red ripe" pulp.</hyperbole>

Share your own evil ad cliches in the comments box.

Down yonder, a reader writes:

My daughter has been learning some Mandarin, and she advised me that
the expression for "yes" in Mandarin is "shi" (it is so) or "hao"
(okay). I checked it out at the following webpage:

http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/yes.htm

That page also cites expressions for "yes" in Latin and Irish.

Thanks for the input, but what your daughter told you isn’t strictly correct.

In Mandarin, "shi" is the verb "to be," and it is used to signal agreement, but it isn’t a direct equivalent for "yes."

"Yes" is a particle that is used to signal agreement irrespective of the content of the question it answers. Questions like "Are you an American?" or "Can you speak English?" both get answered in English by "yes."

In languages that don’t have "yes," like Mandarin, agreement is signalled in a different way that generally depends on the content of the question. Typically, yes-less languages will grab the main verb of the question and use it to signal affirmation.

Thus if someone asks you in Mandarin "Ni hui shuo Yingwen ma?" ("Can you speak English?") , you’d grab the main verb "hui" (sounds like "whey", means "can")  and use it where you’d use "yes" in English.

Similarly, if someone asks you "Ni shi Meiguo ren ma?" ("Are you an American?"), you’d grab the main verb "shi" (sounds like "sure", means "is/are/be") and use it in place of "yes."

(NOTE: These transliterations are very rough as the English alphabet is not designed to convey the sounds used in Mandarin; for example, "shi" actually sounds more like the English word "sure" clipped short, or just "shr!")

Other yes-less languages tend to do the same thing. That’s why, in translations of the liturgy, questions like "Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?" get answered with "I do" (grabbing the main verb) rather than "yes."

The same is true of Irish.

A while back I was reading a 20th century British apologist (Chesterton?) who noted that Irishmen who speak English tend to do this even in English as it’s the way their culture’s native language handles questions. Ask an Irishman "Are you a Catholic?" and you’re more likely to get the answer "I am" than you would if you asked an English or American Catholic the same question (they’d be more inclined to use "yes"). Upon reading this, I recognized that my friend from Dublin would do this all the time, but I hadn’t noticed it before.

As to the yes-in-550-languages page, pages like that are neat, but you have be careful. The people who put those pages together don’t really speak 550 languages, nor (so far as I can tell) are they linguists who could responsibly handle data from a language they don’t personally speak. As a result, there are errors and oversimplifications on those pages.