Category: Languages

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.

A reader writes:

Dear Jim:  I note that please is a word that never shows up in the mass nor in our prayers.  I know that Jesus gave us the words to the Our Father which does not include the word please.  There are a number of places in that prayer where I (as a wretch) would feel please is appropriate (please give us this day our daily bread, please forgive us etc).  Is it possible that please is not used because the language spoken by Jesus did not include such a word?

You’re on to something here, though the problem isn’t just confined to Aramaic, in which the Lord’s Prayer was originally given. It also affects Latin, which is determinative of Mass and most other standard prayers. Neither of these languages has a ready-made word for "please."

"Please" is so important in English politness that it boggles our minds how another langauge can make do without an equivalent to this word, just as our minds boggle that some languages (like Latin, Irish, and Mandarin) manage to make do without a word for "yes."

Thing is: Words like "please" and "yes" don’t really have meaning as such. They are "function words"–words used to perform specific functions. "Please" is a particle of entreaty and politeness, while "yes" is a particle of agreement or affirmation. (Particles are typically short words that never change their form and perform specific functions.)

But it isn’t the particles themselves that are important: It’s the functions they perform. Every language has a way to perform the functions of entreaty, politeness, agreement, and affirmation, they just don’t have handy particles to do it.

A common way in many languages to express entreaty, for example, is to use the imperative mood. That’s what’s going on in the Lord’s Prayer, for example. You look at it in Aramaic (or Greek or Latin), and the verbs in the petitions are in the imperative mood ("give us," "forgive us," "lead us not").

That’s where the problem comes in for us English speakers: The imperative mood does double-duty in languages like the ones just mentioned, where it can serve either to mark a request or a command, but in English since we’ve sloughed off the entreaty function to "please" and other constructions ("Can you . . . ?" "Would you . . . ?"), the imperative is much more associated with commands in English.

If you just bring over an Aramaic, Greek, or Latin imperative into English literally ("Give us this day our daily bread"), it can sound to us like we’re commanding God to do something, when to the speakers of the original languages, it would have been obvious that in these cases the imperative is being used to signal entreaty. (Nobody commands God around.)

The problem is significant enough that people who might be tempted into the Health & Wealth Gospel movement have to be warned about how not to interpret imperatives in the original languages. If you look in Bill Mounce’s book Basics of Biblical Greek, for example, he has a passage warning people against intepreting imperatives directed toward God as commands. All kinds of screwy Hagan-esque "Write your own ticket with God" theology can get started if you don’t recognize how to interpret imperatives toward God.

So you’re right: There ain’t an Aramaic word that is directly equivalent to "please." The language conveys requests and politeness in other ways. That leaves us (including me) as English-speakers wishing "please" was in our standard prayers, but it ain’t. The thing for us to do is to just relax and recognize that the function is being performed by the imperative mood and that we have to take this account when we’re saying our prayers.

 

A reader writes:

Dear Jim:  I note that please is a word that never shows up in the mass nor in our prayers.  I know that Jesus gave us the words to the Our Father which does not include the word please.  There are a number of places in that prayer where I (as a wretch) would feel please is appropriate (please give us this day our daily bread, please forgive us etc).  Is it possible that please is not used because the language spoken by Jesus did not include such a word?

You’re on to something here, though the problem isn’t just confined to Aramaic, in which the Lord’s Prayer was originally given. It also affects Latin, which is determinative of Mass and most other standard prayers. Neither of these languages has a ready-made word for "please."

"Please" is so important in English politness that it boggles our minds how another langauge can make do without an equivalent to this word, just as our minds boggle that some languages (like Latin, Irish, and Mandarin) manage to make do without a word for "yes."

Thing is: Words like "please" and "yes" don’t really have meaning as such. They are "function words"–words used to perform specific functions. "Please" is a particle of entreaty and politeness, while "yes" is a particle of agreement or affirmation. (Particles are typically short words that never change their form and perform specific functions.)

But it isn’t the particles themselves that are important: It’s the functions they perform. Every language has a way to perform the functions of entreaty, politeness, agreement, and affirmation, they just don’t have handy particles to do it.

A common way in many languages to express entreaty, for example, is to use the imperative mood. That’s what’s going on in the Lord’s Prayer, for example. You look at it in Aramaic (or Greek or Latin), and the verbs in the petitions are in the imperative mood ("give us," "forgive us," "lead us not").

That’s where the problem comes in for us English speakers: The imperative mood does double-duty in languages like the ones just mentioned, where it can serve either to mark a request or a command, but in English since we’ve sloughed off the entreaty function to "please" and other constructions ("Can you . . . ?" "Would you . . . ?"), the imperative is much more associated with commands in English.

If you just bring over an Aramaic, Greek, or Latin imperative into English literally ("Give us this day our daily bread"), it can sound to us like we’re commanding God to do something, when to the speakers of the original languages, it would have been obvious that in these cases the imperative is being used to signal entreaty. (Nobody commands God around.)

The problem is significant enough that people who might be tempted into the Health & Wealth Gospel movement have to be warned about how not to interpret imperatives in the original languages. If you look in Bill Mounce’s book Basics of Biblical Greek, for example, he has a passage warning people against intepreting imperatives directed toward God as commands. All kinds of screwy Hagan-esque "Write your own ticket with God" theology can get started if you don’t recognize how to interpret imperatives toward God.

So you’re right: There ain’t an Aramaic word that is directly equivalent to "please." The language conveys requests and politeness in other ways. That leaves us (including me) as English-speakers wishing "please" was in our standard prayers, but it ain’t. The thing for us to do is to just relax and recognize that the function is being performed by the imperative mood and that we have to take this account when we’re saying our prayers.

 

A piece back, someone was asking about what it means when Scripture says that God "hates" something.

One possibility that was raised was the idea that the term for "hate" may at times only mean "to prefer something else to," as when Jesus says that we can’t be his disciples unless we "hate" our family members.

In that passage, it’s clear that what Jesus means is that we can’t be his disciples if we prefer others to him, but it isn’t clear that that’s what the word means in this case. Jesus may be using hyperbole to make a shocking statement that is intended to provoke thought and encourage us to tease out his meaning (the way God often lets us figure things out for ourselves so that we will use the intellects he gave us and thus glorify him).

I said that I’d check with my Aramaic instructor, who is a native speaker of the langauge, and see what he had to say.

I did.

Unfortunatley, I failed to report back in a timely manner, so when I got together with him this week, it jogged my memory.

Here’s the deal:

He says that the relevant verb in Aramaic means what it does in English. "Hate" means "hate." It doesn’t mean "to prefer less than." Jesus is using the word in the shocking, hyperbolic way suggested above, and his original audience would have been as shocked and hyperboled (to make up a word) as we are when we hear the statement.

Of course, my instructor is a native speaker of contemporary Aramaic, not first century, but he does have a familiarity with classical Aramaic (which he also teaches), and my money is that he’s right on this. Jesus is being deliberately provocative with what he says (i.e., he’s trying to provoke thought).

Silent E is an interesting phenomenon in English orthography. It’s a letter, usually at the end of a word, that we don’t pronounce–as in the word "pronounce." That ends in an S-sound, not an E-sound.

Thing is, silent E didn’t used to be silent.

Our English-speaking forebears used to pronounce those Es, which is how they got into the words in the first place. Then, over time, they started droppin’ ’em (like I "drop" my Gs). But the letter in the written form of the word stayed, or "stay-ed" as our forebears would have said.

You can hear a reflection of this in the fact that converts often start by saying "Blessed art thou among women" and pronouncing "blessed" as "blesst" instead of "bless-ed."

So it seems that we can do without all those Es.

But can we do without the letter E altogether and still communicate meaningfully? It is, after all, the single most commonly-used letter in the English alphabet. just look at the number of times I’ve had to use it in this post to say what I wanted to say. Surely nobody could go on for, say, fifty-thousand words of meaningful text without using the letter E.

Oh, no?

CHECK OUT THIS NOVEL THAT IS TOTALLY E-FREE.

Would you expect to find languages using a form of the verb "to go" to express intention? . . . or a form of the verb "to have" to express obligation?

Well, English does. In fact, you just read a sentence (the title of this post) where forms of those words appear in those senses.

They’re somewhat strange senses. Consider:

1. I am going to Rome.
2. I am going to visit Rome.
3. I am going to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "go" has its normal, literal sense of moving from one place to another. In the last sentence it clearly has a metaphorical meaning. You may be sitting in the chair where you plan to study when you say it and may not be physically going anywhere at all. The middle sentence is actually using the same metaphorical sense as the last one, but you may not have noticed it since the topic under discussion was a visit, which would involve moving from one place to another.

Now consider:

1. I have a book
2. I have a headache.
3. I have to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "have" is in its original, literal meaning of possessing a physical object. In the last sentence it has a clearly metaphorical meaning that speaks of an obligation (to study now) as if it were a physical object that could be possessed. The middle sentence also involves a metaphorical sense since headaches are not physical objects that can be possessed, though this is somewhat masked since "a headache" is more obviously a noun phrase than "to study now" is (though, in actuality, "to study now" is a noun phrase since it is based on the infinitive "to study" and infinitives are verbal nouns).

Pretty weird, huh? There’s no necessary connection between the verb and the metaphor that is built out of it. That’s not to say that there is no logic in basing the metaphors on these verbs, it’s just that there is no necessity that the words be used in these metaphorical ways. We could not, for example, substitute synonyms for these verbs and have the resulting metaphors sound normal at all:

1. I am travelling to study now. (When you’re sitting in the chair where you intend to study)
2. I possess to study now.

Nor could you do the reverse:

1. I intend to Rome.
2. I am obligated a book.

With no requirement for "go" and "have" to bear the metaphorical meanings that English ascribes to them, most langauges (at least most languages I’ve studied) do not do this. To express intent and obligation they either use special words (their equivalents of "intend," "obligated," "must," etc.) or they may put the verb in a special mood. In any event, they don’t do what English does.

Imagine my surprise when I found a language that does.

Continue reading “I'm Going To Have To Figure This Out”

Would you expect to find languages using a form of the verb "to go" to express intention? . . . or a form of the verb "to have" to express obligation?

Well, English does. In fact, you just read a sentence (the title of this post) where forms of those words appear in those senses.

They’re somewhat strange senses. Consider:

1. I am going to Rome.
2. I am going to visit Rome.
3. I am going to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "go" has its normal, literal sense of moving from one place to another. In the last sentence it clearly has a metaphorical meaning. You may be sitting in the chair where you plan to study when you say it and may not be physically going anywhere at all. The middle sentence is actually using the same metaphorical sense as the last one, but you may not have noticed it since the topic under discussion was a visit, which would involve moving from one place to another.

Now consider:

1. I have a book
2. I have a headache.
3. I have to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "have" is in its original, literal meaning of possessing a physical object. In the last sentence it has a clearly metaphorical meaning that speaks of an obligation (to study now) as if it were a physical object that could be possessed. The middle sentence also involves a metaphorical sense since headaches are not physical objects that can be possessed, though this is somewhat masked since "a headache" is more obviously a noun phrase than "to study now" is (though, in actuality, "to study now" is a noun phrase since it is based on the infinitive "to study" and infinitives are verbal nouns).

Pretty weird, huh? There’s no necessary connection between the verb and the metaphor that is built out of it. That’s not to say that there is no logic in basing the metaphors on these verbs, it’s just that there is no necessity that the words be used in these metaphorical ways. We could not, for example, substitute synonyms for these verbs and have the resulting metaphors sound normal at all:

1. I am travelling to study now. (When you’re sitting in the chair where you intend to study)
2. I possess to study now.

Nor could you do the reverse:

1. I intend to Rome.
2. I am obligated a book.

With no requirement for "go" and "have" to bear the metaphorical meanings that English ascribes to them, most langauges (at least most languages I’ve studied) do not do this. To express intent and obligation they either use special words (their equivalents of "intend," "obligated," "must," etc.) or they may put the verb in a special mood. In any event, they don’t do what English does.

Imagine my surprise when I found a language that does.

Continue reading “I’m Going To Have To Figure This Out”