Greek quote in Duane's Wizard series?
Liz Broadwell
New York on the assumption that she might enjoy the scene-setting. But
she's a classics Ph.D. candidate, and what's caught her eye is a
transliterated Greek sentence among Macchu Picchu's forecasts of the
future. Unfortunately, she can't translate it completely, and is going
bonkers thinking that it must be some famous quotation she should already
know if she's going to be getting her Ph.D. in the subject. She's
grabbed another classics major friend, and they're hanging around the
apartment muttering things like "so it's an aorist, then?" and "I think
that looks like an infinitive, but then there's two of them, so what do
we do with it?" Can anyone provide a translation so that I can put them
out of their misery?
Thanks,
Liz "Ms. Duane, I buy your books in hardback now" B.
--
Elizabeth Broadwell | "Believe then, if you please, that I can
(ebro...@english.upenn.edu) | do strange things. I have, since I was
Department of English | three year old, conversed with a magician,
University of Pennsylvania | most profound in his art, and yet not
Philadelphia, PA | damnable." -- William Shakespeare
Dorothy J Heydt
Liz Broadwell <ebro...@dept.english.upenn.edu> wrote:
>I handed Diane Duane's _So You Want to Be a Wizard_ to my roommate from
>New York on the assumption that she might enjoy the scene-setting. But
>she's a classics Ph.D. candidate, and what's caught her eye is a
Well, I believe Ms. Duane reads this group, so you may get an
answer.
It may be on the order of "I goofed" or "the typesetter or
copyeditor goofed" or "Oh, sorry, I got that from a book, is it
wrong?"
Tell your classicist friend, for her own peace of mind, not to
read Connie Willis's _Doomsday Book_ (great though it is) just
now. There's a bit of supposed Latin in there that makes me itch
every time I see it. (I think Ms. Willis must have seen it on a
photograph or something and mis-copied it.)
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Liz Broadwell
: In article <9hsdo4$3hv$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
: Liz Broadwell <ebro...@dept.english.upenn.edu> wrote:
: >I handed Diane Duane's _So You Want to Be a Wizard_ to my roommate from
: >New York on the assumption that she might enjoy the scene-setting. But
: >she's a classics Ph.D. candidate, and what's caught her eye is a
: >transliterated Greek sentence ....
: Well, I believe Ms. Duane reads this group, so you may get an
: answer.
Here's hoping ...
: It may be on the order of "I goofed" or "the typesetter or
: copyeditor goofed" or "Oh, sorry, I got that from a book, is it
: wrong?"
We've considered that -- there's also the fact that it's transliterated
into the Roman alphabet, which allows for a whole 'nother level of
possible typing errors and judgment calls. The early discussion included
stuff like "I think she's using 'ou' to represent omega, but what's that
'y' doing there, then?" Non-classicists in the room begin to glaze over
after several consecutive minutes of this.
: Tell your classicist friend, for her own peace of mind, not to
: read Connie Willis's _Doomsday Book_ (great though it is) just
: now. There's a bit of supposed Latin in there that makes me itch
: every time I see it. (I think Ms. Willis must have seen it on a
: photograph or something and mis-copied it.)
Oof. I'll be careful myself, then; Latin is one of my languages
(allowing me to become one of the local experts on the Hogwarts crest).
It's just this Greek stuff that leaves me in the dust.
Peace,
Liz
Arian Hokin
> Dorothy J Heydt (djh...@kithrup.com) wrote:
> : In article <9hsdo4$3hv$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
> : Liz Broadwell <ebro...@dept.english.upenn.edu> wrote:
> : >I handed Diane Duane's _So You Want to Be a Wizard_ to my roommate
> : >from New York on the assumption that she might enjoy the scene-setting.
> : >But she's a classics Ph.D. candidate, and what's caught her eye is a
> : >transliterated Greek sentence ....
>
> : Well, I believe Ms. Duane reads this group, so you may get an
> : answer.
>
> Here's hoping ...
>
> : It may be on the order of "I goofed" or "the typesetter or
> : copyeditor goofed" or "Oh, sorry, I got that from a book, is it
> : wrong?"
>
> We've considered that -- there's also the fact that it's transliterated
> into the Roman alphabet, which allows for a whole 'nother level of
> possible typing errors and judgment calls. The early discussion included
> stuff like "I think she's using 'ou' to represent omega, but what's that
> 'y' doing there, then?" Non-classicists in the room begin to glaze over
> after several consecutive minutes of this.
Hehe. The power, the power! :-)
> : Tell your classicist friend, for her own peace of mind, not to
> : read Connie Willis's _Doomsday Book_ (great though it is) just
> : now. There's a bit of supposed Latin in there that makes me itch
> : every time I see it. (I think Ms. Willis must have seen it on a
> : photograph or something and mis-copied it.)
It can't be worse than "Illegitimi non carborundum"...
> Oof. I'll be careful myself, then; Latin is one of my languages
> (allowing me to become one of the local experts on the Hogwarts crest).
And a important function it is, too. My daughter is very proud of being able
to tell all her school friends what "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus"
means.
> It's just this Greek stuff that leaves me in the dust.
My Greek is very rusty, and was never as good as my Latin, but I'd be
interested to see a copy of the sentence, if it's not too long to type easily.
Arian
Dorothy J Heydt
Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>
[bad Latin in _Doomsday Book_]
>
>It can't be worse than "Illegitimi non carborundum"...
Oh yes it can. At least two words of the above are Latin and the
third is in Latin form, even if fairly recently made-up.
(BTW, a fairly decent Latin translation of "don't let the
bastards grind you down" is "Noli permittere nothos te
permolere.")
SPOILERS for the line in _Doomsday Book_:
not for the faint of heart.....
It's supposed to mean "you are here in place of the friends I
love." The text given is "Io suuicien lui damo amo." "Amo" does
indeed mean "I love"; the rest of it is not Latin for anything so
far as I can tell. Since Willis does tons of research and
usually gets stuff right, I suspect she saw a photograph of an
artifact with an inscription on it and mistranscribed it.
Michael S. Schiffer
<GFx1G...@kithrup.com>:
>In article <3B422EAC...@holly.northnet.com.au>,
>Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>...
>>It can't be worse than "Illegitimi non carborundum"...
>Oh yes it can. At least two words of the above are Latin and the
>third is in Latin form, even if fairly recently made-up.
>(BTW, a fairly decent Latin translation of "don't let the
>bastards grind you down" is "Noli permittere nothos te
>permolere.")
But that's not as funny.
Granted, "Illegitimi non carborundum" is pretty much a funny-once, so
after a few decades in circulation that may not matter any more. But
still, I think whatever entertainment value the motto has depends
almost entirely on the words' English counterparts, juxtaposed with the
formal/scientific/religious associations of Latin. The accurate
translation IMHO loses one of the crucial elements of the dog-Latin
version. (Though I do think "Noli permittere nothos te permolere" has
a nice rhythm and rhyme of its own.)
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS If reading in an archive, please do
ms...@mediaone.net not click on words highlighted as links
msch...@condor.depaul.edu by Deja or other archives. They violate
the author's copyright and his wishes.
Phil Fraering
> In article <3B422EAC...@holly.northnet.com.au>,
> Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
> >
> [bad Latin in _Doomsday Book_]
> >
> >It can't be worse than "Illegitimi non carborundum"...
>
> Oh yes it can. At least two words of the above are Latin and the
> third is in Latin form, even if fairly recently made-up.
>
> (BTW, a fairly decent Latin translation of "don't let the
> bastards grind you down" is "Noli permittere nothos te
> permolere.")
Thanks. I always wondered.
--
Phil Fraering "Do you like country music? So do I, and I
p...@globalreach.net sure do miss it..." -KBON radio announcer
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>In article <3B422EAC...@holly.northnet.com.au>,
>Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>>
>[bad Latin in _Doomsday Book_]
>>
>>It can't be worse than "Illegitimi non carborundum"...
>
>Oh yes it can. At least two words of the above are Latin and the
>third is in Latin form, even if fairly recently made-up.
>
>(BTW, a fairly decent Latin translation of "don't let the
>bastards grind you down" is "Noli permittere nothos te
>permolere.")
But, as practically all Latin in Pratchett's books, it's half bad
Latin and half dog Latin. :-)
>
>SPOILERS for the line in _Doomsday Book_:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>not for the faint of heart.....
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>It's supposed to mean "you are here in place of the friends I
>love." The text given is "Io suuicien lui damo amo." "Amo" does
>indeed mean "I love"; the rest of it is not Latin for anything so
>far as I can tell. Since Willis does tons of research and
>usually gets stuff right, I suspect she saw a photograph of an
>artifact with an inscription on it and mistranscribed it.
Methinks it's in Italian or in bad Italian. 'Io' is Italian for 'I',
'lui' Italian for 'him'. 'Amare' means 'to love' in Italian, too, so
'amo' is also the first person singular. "I love."
After a long search, I found that 'damo' is Tuscan dialect for
'fiance,' male. Quite possibly archaic.
Or maybe a form of the verb 'dare' - 'to give'.
"Suuicien" really doesn't ring a bell. Might be that it was something
like 'suicidio' - 'suicide' as action, also possibly archaic. (I don't
understand the abbreviations in the Italian dictionary.) Or 'suicida'
- suicidal or the suicide. Looks like a possible mis-transcription.
We should ask Anna. Or Anna. :-)
vlatko
--
_Neither Fish Nor Fowl_
http://www.webart.hr/nrnm/eng/index.htm
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
Arian Hokin
> In article <3B422EAC...@holly.northnet.com.au>,
> Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
> >
> [bad Latin in _Doomsday Book_]
> >
> >It can't be worse than "Illegitimi non carborundum"...
>
> Oh yes it can. At least two words of the above are Latin and the
> third is in Latin form, even if fairly recently made-up.
True. :-)
> (BTW, a fairly decent Latin translation of "don't let the
> bastards grind you down" is "Noli permittere nothos te
> permolere.")
Very nice.
> SPOILERS for the line in _Doomsday Book_:
>
> not for the faint of heart.....
>
> It's supposed to mean "you are here in place of the friends I
> love." The text given is "Io suuicien lui damo amo." "Amo" does
> indeed mean "I love"; the rest of it is not Latin for anything so
> far as I can tell. Since Willis does tons of research and
> usually gets stuff right, I suspect she saw a photograph of an
> artifact with an inscription on it and mistranscribed it.
"Io" is Italian for "I" and "lui" for "he".
"Amo" is Italian as well as Latin for "I love".
"Damo" might be a form of "dare" = 'give' in Italian, but without a
written paradigm to hand, I'm not sure.
A search for the motto on the Web turns up the second word as
"suicien" - was that your typo or the other writer's? Not that it
makes sense in either form, as either Italian or Latin.
I can't even think what she may have *meant* to say. "You are here in
place of the friends I love" would be "Ades pro amicis quos amo." None
of that looks very much like the actual motto, does it?
Arian
Dorothy J Heydt
Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>A search for the motto on the Web turns up the second word as
>"suicien" - was that your typo or the other writer's? Not that it
>makes sense in either form, as either Italian or Latin.
The form in the paperback edition of _DB_ that I have (ISBN
0-553-56273-8, first print run I think) gives "suuicien". Not,
as you say, that it makes sense either way.
>I can't even think what she may have *meant* to say. "You are here in
>place of the friends I love" would be "Ades pro amicis quos amo." None
>of that looks very much like the actual motto, does it?
Nope. From what I've read about her, Willis does tons of
research before each book, and she did research the many snippets
of ecclesiastical Latin that pepper _DB_. They're the right
snippets, if you follow me, but she doesn't *know* Latin and
neither did her editor nor copy-editor, so any time a mistake
crept in it stayed. Not the kind of mistakes that really did get
into Latin texts in the Middle Ages (and Lord knows they were
many), but the kind of mistake made by a 20th-century writer who
doesn't really comprehend that those inflectional endings *mean*
something and one is different from another for a reason.
Oh, well. Some people hate the book and some people love it and
I'm firmly in the latter camp in spite of the mistakes. Though
curiously enough I like the 21st-century parts better than the
14th-century parts.
David T. Bilek
<ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
>> In article <3B422EAC...@holly.northnet.com.au>,
>> Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>> >
>> [bad Latin in _Doomsday Book_]
>> >
>> >It can't be worse than "Illegitimi non carborundum"...
>>
>> Oh yes it can. At least two words of the above are Latin and the
>> third is in Latin form, even if fairly recently made-up.
>
>True. :-)
>
>> (BTW, a fairly decent Latin translation of "don't let the
>> bastards grind you down" is "Noli permittere nothos te
>> permolere.")
>
>Very nice.
>
Yeah, but it isn't *funny*, which is sort of the point.
-David
Dorothy J Heydt
David T. Bilek <dbi...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>>
>>> (BTW, a fairly decent Latin translation of "don't let the
>>> bastards grind you down" is "Noli permittere nothos te
>>> permolere.")
>>
>>Very nice.
>
>Yeah, but it isn't *funny*, which is sort of the point.
It depends on what point you want. Under some conditions bad X
can be funny because it is bad. Under others, only good X will
suffice. If it comes to Latin, if it's going to be bad Latin I
want it at least to be medieval bad Latin, a scribal error or
somehing, not twentieth-century bad Latin invented on the spot
for the *purpose* of being bad. YMMV.
David Silberstein
Liz Broadwell <ebro...@dept.english.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>I handed Diane Duane's _So You Want to Be a Wizard_ to my roommate
>from New York on the assumption that she might enjoy the scene-setting.
>But she's a classics Ph.D. candidate, and what's caught her eye is a
>transliterated Greek sentence ....
>
Dorothy J Heydt (djh...@kithrup.com) wrote:
> Well, I believe Ms. Duane reads this group, so you may get an
> answer.
> It may be on the order of "I goofed" or "the typesetter or
> copyeditor goofed" or "Oh, sorry, I got that from a book, is it
> wrong?"
Liz Broadwell wrote:
>
> We've considered that -- there's also the fact that it's transliterated
> into the Roman alphabet, which allows for a whole 'nother level of
> possible typing errors and judgment calls. The early discussion included
> stuff like "I think she's using 'ou' to represent omega, but what's that
> 'y' doing there, then?" Non-classicists in the room begin to glaze over
> after several consecutive minutes of this.
>
In article <3B422EAC...@holly.northnet.com.au>,
Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>My Greek is very rusty, and was never as good as my Latin, but I'd be
>interested to see a copy of the sentence, if it's not too long to type
>easily.
>
I've got the collected "Support Your Local Wizard". It's in the chapter
"Research and Development" (pg 52), spoken by Machu Picchu
(a macaw - "she only speaks in tongues to show off").
The phrase is, as shown in the book,
"Dos d'en agouni nikyn toude pheresthai"
My colloquial Greek dictionary suggests that "agouni" could be "agwn"
("w"=omega), which means "stuggle" or "contest", (although
it could also be a form of agony), "d'en" is probably "den" (the
apostrophe probably means the accent over the epsilon), meaning "not",
and "nikyn", of course, is some form of "nike^" (e^=eta), meaning
"victory".
A web search suggests that "pheresthai" is a form of "pherw", "to bear".
And "toude" is a form of "houde", meaning "this".
( http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/morphindex?lang=greek )
And that's where I gave up - I'm don't know the grammatical forms.
I think it must be a fairly well-known quote, but I can't guess at
what it is. Anyone else? Diane?
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>In article <3B42BE8F...@holly.northnet.com.au>,
>Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>A search for the motto on the Web turns up the second word as
>>"suicien" - was that your typo or the other writer's? Not that it
>>makes sense in either form, as either Italian or Latin.
>
>The form in the paperback edition of _DB_ that I have (ISBN
>0-553-56273-8, first print run I think) gives "suuicien". Not,
>as you say, that it makes sense either way.
Anna told me it's *not* Italian, in spite of the appearances, unless a
cross between Italian and Latin or a very early Italian, from the time
it started splitting from Latin.
And she forwarded the quote to Anna, who studied literature. :-)
Christopher Pound
Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> It's supposed to mean "you are here in place of the friends I
>> love." The text given is "Io suuicien lui damo amo."
>
>"suicien" - was that your typo or the other writer's? Not that it
>makes sense in either form, as either Italian or Latin.
Sure looks like some Romance language, but I can't make it out either:
Italian, io; Lingua Franca, io/iou; Occitan, ieu => "I"
French, suis; Occitan, soi or sui => "am"
French, ici en lieu => "here in place"?
Saves (a Gascon dialect), dama (pronounced damo in Saves, it seems) => "lady"
Saves (a Gascom dialect), looks like a verb amar would have amo => "he loves"
So perhaps "I am here in place [of the] lady he loves"? Would
that make sense in context? I'm just making this up using some stuff
on Occitan and Saves at http://occitanet.free.fr/ plus a very
little knowledge of French.
--
Christopher Pound (po...@rice.edu)
Dept. of Anthropology, Rice University
Eveleen McAuley
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote
> From what I've read about her, Willis does tons of research
> before each book, and she did research the many snippets
> of ecclesiastical Latin that pepper _DB_. They're the right
> snippets, if you follow me, but she doesn't *know* Latin and
> neither did her editor nor copy-editor, so any time a mistake
> crept in it stayed.
I remember being jolted by one point in 'To Say Nothing of the Dog'. All
the Jerome and Sayers references were so well done, and then she made a
strange mistake about the Irish maid's name - she was supposed to be
called Colleen, which would be pretty well impossible in the 19th century.
Since Colleen means 'girl', it was only in America, away from any use of
the Irish language that it began to be used as a first name, and up to
about 1965 Irish Catholics only used actual saints' names - and there was
never a Saint Colleen.
I thought it was odd, when any reference to actual 19th century books
would have found the kinds of names people used at the time, and the
busines of real names and nicknames was quite an important point in the
book.
Eveleen McAuley
(Girl McAuley just wouldn't work, would it?)
Arian Hokin
But it's alliterative, and thus snappy. Swings and roundabouts.
Arian
Arian Hokin
Hey, yeah, look at that! It looks like (excuse the mistakes; I've
never formally studied French):
"Je suis ici en lieu d' amis (pronoun?) aime."
i.e. with "damo" = "of the friends"
I think you're onto something. :-) That bit at the beginning certainly
looks like "I am" rather than "you are", doesn't it ...
Arian
Christopher Pound
Christopher Pound <po...@is.rice.edu> wrote:
>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>The text given is "Io suuicien lui damo amo."
>
Oh, it occurs to me that maybe it should be parsed "Io su[u] ici en lui
d'amo amo," or "I am here in place of the friends that I love." It wouldn't
surprise me a bit to find some Romance language where the plural of friend
is the same as the first person singular for love. I once had to work a
problem regarding a dialect of Italian that used vowel harmony to distinguish
singular and plural, e.g. brukkuli vs. brokkoli (one broccoli, multiple
broccolis; this was given on a phonology exam, though I may have switched
which one was singular and which was plural).
Arian Hokin
> I remember being jolted by one point in 'To Say Nothing of the Dog'. All
> the Jerome and Sayers references were so well done, and then she made a
> strange mistake about the Irish maid's name - she was supposed to be
> called Colleen, which would be pretty well impossible in the 19th century.
>
> Since Colleen means 'girl', it was only in America, away from any use of
> the Irish language that it began to be used as a first name, and up to
> about 1965 Irish Catholics only used actual saints' names - and there was
> never a Saint Colleen.
>
> I thought it was odd, when any reference to actual 19th century books
> would have found the kinds of names people used at the time, and the
> busines of real names and nicknames was quite an important point in the
> book.
>
> Eveleen McAuley
> (Girl McAuley just wouldn't work, would it?)
For the same reason, Australian girls are not named Sheila. No, that isn't a
joke.
Arian
Dorothy J Heydt
>
>Italian, io; Lingua Franca, io/iou; Occitan, ieu => "I"
>French, suis; Occitan, soi or sui => "am"
>French, ici en lieu => "here in place"?
>Saves (a Gascon dialect), dama (pronounced damo in Saves, it seems) => "lady"
>Saves (a Gascom dialect), looks like a verb amar would have amo => "he loves"
>
>So perhaps "I am here in place [of the] lady he loves"? Would
>that make sense in context? I'm just making this up using some stuff
>on Occitan and Saves at http://occitanet.free.fr/ plus a very
>little knowledge of French.
You just might have something here. My assumption has been all
along that Willis got hold of a *photograph* in a book of an
object, possibly a brooch as in the novel, with an inscription on
it, and a caption saying "The inscription means 'You are here in
place of the friends I love.'" Possibly whoever wrote the caption
was using faulty data, and it isn't Latin at all and it doesn't
mean quite what the caption said.
Dorothy J Heydt
Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>Hey, yeah, look at that! It looks like (excuse the mistakes; I've
>never formally studied French):
>
>"Je suis ici en lieu d' amis (pronoun?) aime."
In the French I learned it would be "des amis que j'aime," but if
we're talking some obscure 14th-or-earlier Romance language only
approximately French, yeah, it might.
>
>i.e. with "damo" = "of the friends"
>
>I think you're onto something. :-)
Yes...
That bit at the beginning certainly
>looks like "I am" rather than "you are", doesn't it ...
Yes. And not only that, inscriptions on items had a tendency to
speak in the first person. "AElfred heht mec gewyrcean,"
"Alfred cause me {an enamel handle probably for a pointer] to be
made." There are others but since I can't spell 'em accurately I
won't quote 'em.
And if the first-person pronoun refers to the brooch itself...
could "damo amo" possibly mean "of [a] beloved friend"? *I*
don't know of any French-related dialect that used -o as an
objective ending, but that isn't to say there wasn't one.
So we would get something like
Io suu ici en lui d .amo amo
I am here in place of [a] beloved friend
And the main places in which the caption writer goofed were in
(a) claiming it was Latin and (b) getting all the pronouns wrong.
Good heavens.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Silberstein) wrote:
>The phrase is, as shown in the book,
>"Dos d'en agouni nikyn toude pheresthai"
>
>My colloquial Greek dictionary suggests that "agouni" could be "agwn"
>("w"=omega), which means "stuggle" or "contest", (although
>it could also be a form of agony), "d'en" is probably "den" (the
>apostrophe probably means the accent over the epsilon), meaning "not",
>and "nikyn", of course, is some form of "nike^" (e^=eta), meaning
>"victory".
>
>A web search suggests that "pheresthai" is a form of "pherw", "to bear".
>And "toude" is a form of "houde", meaning "this".
>
>( http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/morphindex?lang=greek )
>
>And that's where I gave up - I'm don't know the grammatical forms.
>I think it must be a fairly well-known quote, but I can't guess at
>what it is. Anyone else? Diane?
>
"Do not question (scorn, reject) the victory this bears"? Rings a
bell? Or completely useless?
Barbara
Yes, but why assume that the Latin is Classical Latin?
Barbara Need
Dorothy J Heydt
It isn't medieval Latin either, believe me. If you look around
the rest of this thread you'll see posts suggesting that it's
really some kind of Provencal or related dialect.
Arian Hokin
> In article <3B4387FD...@holly.northnet.com.au>,
> Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >Hey, yeah, look at that! It looks like (excuse the mistakes; I've
> >never formally studied French):
> >
> >"Je suis ici en lieu d' amis (pronoun?) aime."
>
> In the French I learned it would be "des amis que j'aime,"
Thanks. What French I know has got in by osmosis rather than
instruction, so I knew the grammar was out; but you see my point about
the similarity.
> but if
> we're talking some obscure 14th-or-earlier Romance language only
> approximately French, yeah, it might.
I reckon so.
> >i.e. with "damo" = "of the friends"
> >
> >I think you're onto something. :-)
>
> Yes...
>
> >That bit at the beginning certainly
> >looks like "I am" rather than "you are", doesn't it ...
>
> Yes. And not only that, inscriptions on items had a tendency to
> speak in the first person. "AElfred heht mec gewyrcean,"
> "Alfred cause me {an enamel handle probably for a pointer] to be
> made." There are others but since I can't spell 'em accurately I
> won't quote 'em.
>
> And if the first-person pronoun refers to the brooch itself...
> could "damo amo" possibly mean "of [a] beloved friend"? *I*
> don't know of any French-related dialect that used -o as an
> objective ending, but that isn't to say there wasn't one.
>
> So we would get something like
>
> Io suu ici en lui d .amo amo
> I am here in place of [a] beloved friend
By Jove, I think she's got it! :-D
> And the main places in which the caption writer goofed were in
> (a) claiming it was Latin and (b) getting all the pronouns wrong.
>
> Good heavens.
I'll say.
Arian
Alejandros Diamandidis
>
> On Wed, 4 Jul 2001 19:15:07 GMT, dav...@kithrup.com (David
> Silberstein) wrote:
>
> >The phrase is, as shown in the book,
> >"Dos d'en agouni nikyn toude pheresthai"
> >
> >My colloquial Greek dictionary suggests that "agouni" could be "agwn"
> >("w"=omega), which means "stuggle" or "contest", (although
> >it could also be a form of agony), "d'en" is probably "den" (the
"d'en" is probably a contraction of "de en". "en agwni" = in contest
("agwni" is the dative of "agwn"). "Dos" = give. "nikyn" is probably a
misspelling of "nike^n" (upsilon instead of eta).
> >A web search suggests that "pheresthai" is a form of "pherw", "to bear".
Passive infinitive. But its meaning here may not be exactly "to bear".
> >And "toude" is a form of "houde", meaning "this".
Or maybe "now".
> "Do not question (scorn, reject) the victory this bears"? Rings a
> bell? Or completely useless?
Sorry, that's not correct. The first part is definitely "So give victory
in contest...", but I can't parse the rest - maybe "...so that this can
be endured." but probably not. I haven't practiced my ancient Greek for
12 years, and modern syntax is different.
--
Alejandros Diamandidis * ad...@egnatia.ee.auth.gr
Susan Stepney
>
> So we would get something like
>
> Io suu ici en lui d .amo amo
> I am here in place of [a] beloved friend
>
> And the main places in which the caption writer goofed were in
> (a) claiming it was Latin and (b) getting all the pronouns wrong.
>
> Good heavens.
So actually, it's a very subtle joke by the author, that took the
combined might of rasfw to puzzle out? Gosh.
--
_____________________________________________________________________
Susan Stepney tel +44 1223 366343 step...@logica.com
Logica UK Ltd, Betjeman House, 104 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 1LQ, UK
http://public.logica.com/~stepneys/ http://www.logica.com/
Diane Duane
wrote:
>I handed Diane Duane's _So You Want to Be a Wizard_ to my roommate from
>New York on the assumption that she might enjoy the scene-setting. But
>she's a classics Ph.D. candidate, and what's caught her eye is a
>transliterated Greek sentence among Macchu Picchu's forecasts of the
>future. Unfortunately, she can't translate it completely, and is going
>bonkers thinking that it must be some famous quotation she should already
>know if she's going to be getting her Ph.D. in the subject.
Oh dear. Liz, please tell your roomie and her friend that (if I remember
correctly) the sentence is a (probably much-mangled) fragment of Sappho. I
would have to go digging around in the old files to find which one.
And then tell them to take that aorist out and get it some fresh air. ;)
,
>Liz "Ms. Duane, I buy your books in hardback now" B.
Thank you for helping feed our cats. :)
Best -- Diane
The Owl Springs Partnership / County Wicklow, Ireland
http://www.owlsprings.com
Diane Duane
<ad...@egnatia.ee.auth.gr> wrote:
>Sorry, that's not correct. The first part is definitely "So give victory
>in contest...", but I can't parse the rest - maybe "...so that this can
>be endured." but probably not. I haven't practiced my ancient Greek for
>12 years, and modern syntax is different.
You've just jogged my memory, and of course, you're right. And it wasn't Sappho
after all, but Homer. The fragment is from one of the Hymns to Aphrodite.
Translation of ancient poetry is always a thorny business, so here are several
renderings:
Eddison: "...vouchsafe me in this contest to bear victory, and do You attune my
song."
The translation in Project Gutenberg: "Grant that I may gain the victory in
this contest, and order you my song."
Sargent: "Grant that in this contest I be the victor and urge on my lay."
Best! -- Diane
Liz Broadwell
: You've just jogged my memory, and of course, you're right. And it
: wasn't Sappho
: after all, but Homer. The fragment is from one of the Hymns to Aphrodite.
Great! Thanks to everyone who weighed in -- I can put my friends out of
their misery now (they were still at it as of last night, and had managed
"Give victory in the contest" when I fell asleep).
All of this problem-solving has reminded me of the visual pun (if you can
call it that) in the "Dens. Drac." episode of Diana Wynne Jones's _Ogre
Downstairs_, which I also referred to my classicist friends for
interpretation. It took a little while for them to get back to me, but
only because they were laughing so hard they could barely breathe.
Peace,
Liz
--
Elizabeth Broadwell | "Believe then, if you please, that I can
(ebro...@english.upenn.edu) | do strange things. I have, since I was
Department of English | three year old, conversed with a magician,
University of Pennsylvania | most profound in his art, and yet not
Philadelphia, PA | damnable." -- William Shakespeare
Dorothy J Heydt
Susan Stepney <step...@logica.com> wrote:
>
>So actually, it's a very subtle joke by the author, that took the
>combined might of rasfw to puzzle out? Gosh.
No, I just think somebody goofed. And Willis may have
transcribed that inscription more accurately than I gave her
credit for. I'd love to know....
Jancie
> >
> > Since Colleen means 'girl', it was only in America, away from any use of
> > the Irish language that it began to be used as a first name, and up to
> > about 1965 Irish Catholics only used actual saints' names - and there was
> > never a Saint Colleen.
> >
> > (Girl McAuley just wouldn't work, would it?)
>
> For the same reason, Australian girls are not named Sheila. No, that isn't a
> joke.
>
> Arian
Bonnie Rideout talked about people in Scotland smiling at her first name.
Jancie in Georgia
Robert Carnegie
I presume the book that it comes from isn't too serious...
perhaps "If it works, don't knock it"? ;-)
David Silberstein
<ad...@egnatia.ee.auth.gr> wrote:
>
>Sorry, that's not correct. The first part is definitely "So give victory
>in contest...", but I can't parse the rest - maybe "...so that this can
>be endured." but probably not. I haven't practiced my ancient Greek for
>12 years, and modern syntax is different.
>
In article <40n8kt0thpmgjmgu3...@4ax.com>,
Diane Duane <owls...@iol.ie> wrote:
>
>You've just jogged my memory, and of course, you're right. And it
>wasn't Sappho after all, but Homer. The fragment is from one of
>the Hymns to Aphrodite.
>
>Translation of ancient poetry is always a thorny business, so here
>are several renderings:
>
>Eddison: "...vouchsafe me in this contest to bear victory, and do
>You attune my song."
>
>The translation in Project Gutenberg: "Grant that I may gain the
>victory in this contest, and order you my song."
>
>Sargent: "Grant that in this contest I be the victor and urge on
>my lay."
>
>Best! -- Diane
>
It looks like Project Gutenberg used the same source as
Project Perseus, edited by Hugh G. Evelyn-White.
For completeness' sake, here's the complete fragment with translation:
(ô=omega, ę=eta, in case you have problems with accented characters)
chair' helikoblephare, glukumeiliche:
dos d' en agôni nikęn tôide pheresthai,
emęn d' entunon aoidęn.
autar egô kai seio kai allęs mnęsom' aoidęs.
Hail, sweetly-winning, coy-eyed goddess!
Grant that I may gain the victory in this contest,
and order you my song.
And now I will remember you and another song also.
Source links:
Transliterated Greek, with explanations for some of the words:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0137&query=head%3D%237
English:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0138&query=head%3D%237
erilar
> Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
> > Nope. From what I've read about her, Willis does tons of
> > research before each book, and she did research the many snippets
> > of ecclesiastical Latin that pepper _DB_.
> > Oh, well. Some people hate the book and some people love it and
> > I'm firmly in the latter camp in spite of the mistakes. Though
> > curiously enough I like the 21st-century parts better than the
> > 14th-century parts.
Well, as a medieval enthusiast, I was fascinated by the past part 8-)
But what I admired most of all was how good both lines were and how well
the combination worked.
I read _Timeline_ a while back. When I read _DB_ I thought "THAT's how
to do it RIGHT!!"
--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka erilar)
Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
Joe Slater
>All of this problem-solving has reminded me of the visual pun (if you can
>call it that) in the "Dens. Drac." episode of Diana Wynne Jones's _Ogre
>Downstairs_, which I also referred to my classicist friends for
>interpretation. It took a little while for them to get back to me, but
>only because they were laughing so hard they could barely breathe.
I think I may have missed something there. I only got the obvious -
that the names were Latin (or at least dog-Latin) for the contents.
jds
--
Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must
have come from the crude hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even
the most decadent of communities.
_Beyond the Wall of Sleep_ by H P Lovecraft
D. Gascoyne
> ebro...@dept.english.upenn.edu (Liz Broadwell) wrote:
> >All of this problem-solving has reminded me of the visual pun (if you can
> >call it that) in the "Dens. Drac." episode of Diana Wynne Jones's _Ogre
> >Downstairs_, which I also referred to my classicist friends for
> >interpretation. It took a little while for them to get back to me, but
> >only because they were laughing so hard they could barely breathe.
>
> I think I may have missed something there. I only got the obvious -
> that the names were Latin (or at least dog-Latin) for the contents.
It may have changed in later editions of the book, but in my copy, in the
Dens Draco episode, the Greek warriors pop out of the ground speaking words
written in Greek letters (very cleverly with punctuation that makes the words
look like real Greek words) which when you read them out loud say things like
"let me at 'im"
Debbie
Joe Slater
>> >All of this problem-solving has reminded me of the visual pun (if you can
>> >call it that) in the "Dens. Drac." episode of Diana Wynne Jones's _Ogre
>> >Downstairs_, which I also referred to my classicist friends for
>> >interpretation. It took a little while for them to get back to me, but
>> >only because they were laughing so hard they could barely breathe.
>Joe Slater wrote:
>> I think I may have missed something there. I only got the obvious -
>> that the names were Latin (or at least dog-Latin) for the contents.
"D. Gascoyne" <gasc...@home.com> wrote:
>It may have changed in later editions of the book, but in my copy, in the
>Dens Draco episode, the Greek warriors pop out of the ground speaking words
>written in Greek letters (very cleverly with punctuation that makes the words
>look like real Greek words) which when you read them out loud say things like
>"let me at 'im"
Oh, I thought she was talking about the labels on the bottles. Yes,
your explanation makes more sense. I think I got that at the time, but
I might be misremembering.
Bill Woods
Maybe Kivrin changed the "I" to "you" deliberately
as she read the inscription, to maintain the meaning
of the phrase she was reading?
Brooch: "I am here in place of a beloved friend"
Kivrin: "Yes, *you* are here [and not my friend, dammit]"
--
Bill Woods
"The positive effects of a monarchy are indistinguisable
from those of a sufficiently large ziggurat."
-- Homerick's Law
Sharon Goetz
[munch]
> Oh, well. Some people hate the book and some people love it and
> I'm firmly in the latter camp in spite of the mistakes. Though
> curiously enough I like the 21st-century parts better than the
> 14th-century parts.
I'm glad to know that Willis does much research on her backgrounds--it
seemed to me that she must've, but I disliked the 14th-c. parts enough to
begin wondering whether I'd missed something crucial *in* the book. Maybe
I did. I liked the 21st-c. parts better, but Oxford-as-given was so far
from Oxford-now that my belief sat firmly on the ground and refused to
budge. (The interval between our present and the book's isn't enough to
warrant that much change.) That said, I enjoyed _To Say Nothing of the
Dog_, and I'm not usually much for comedy.
Many people've said that reading fiction about Things One Knows (or
thinks one does, or feels one ought to know, or whatever) tends to be
somewhat unsuccessful because one knows too much. I can't contest that,
though I wish it weren't true as often as it is; I became interested in
things medieval via Celtic Twilight stuff, and it feels hypocritical not
to be able to stand most of it anymore. What I wonder is what sorts of
things trigger that sense that the author got something fundamentally
wrong. Is it the worldbuilding's overall robustness, for instance? I
recently read Poul Anderson's _Broken Sword_ for the first time (and
thought it was great); though I could probably ID a medieval analogue for
nearly every major plot point and character in it, those thoughts didn't
intrude till I was done, and even then I only wondered what Anderson had
read. (Perhaps it's silly to wish I could like the Willis more, since the
POV character realizes at some point that what we thought we knew about
Middle English and its pronunciation is wrong. That appealed to me,
although her book's overall feel didn't.)
sharon
Larry Caldwell
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr writes:
> "Suuicien" really doesn't ring a bell. Might be that it was something
> like 'suicidio' - 'suicide' as action, also possibly archaic. (I don't
> understand the abbreviations in the Italian dictionary.) Or 'suicida'
> - suicidal or the suicide. Looks like a possible mis-transcription.
The spelling looks weird. From context, I would guess a root related to
sucre or succerere.
John Andrew Fairhurst
> curiously enough I like the 21st-century parts better than the
> 14th-century parts.
>
This seems to be dependant on when I read it. Mostly, I like the 14th
century stuff best, but the last couple of times, I preferred the 21st
century stuff <shrug>.
--
John Fairhurst
In Association with Amazon worldwide:
http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk
Classic Science Fiction & Fantasy
William December Starr
Arian Hokin <ar...@holly.northnet.com.au> said:
>> Oof. I'll be careful myself, then; Latin is one of my languages
>> (allowing me to become one of the local experts on the Hogwarts
>> crest).
>
> And a important function it is, too. My daughter is very proud of
> being able to tell all her school friends what "Draco dormiens
> nunquam titillandus" means.
Never tickle/stimulate (generally, disturb?) a sleeping dragon, right?
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
David Given
"D. Gascoyne" <gasc...@home.com> writes:
[...]
> It may have changed in later editions of the book, but in my copy, in the
> Dens Draco episode, the Greek warriors pop out of the ground speaking words
> written in Greek letters (very cleverly with punctuation that makes the words
> look like real Greek words) which when you read them out loud say things like
> "let me at 'im"
There's a short sequence in Michael Scott Rohan's _Cloud Castles_ where
Fisher encounters an ancient Greek sailor. Lands his helicopter on his
deck, actually. Among the other things that the sailor says to him is:
`beta upsilon gamma gamma epsilon rho <space> omega phi phi'
Rendered in the apropriate font, of course.
--
+- David Given --------McQ-+ "I told you to make one longer than another, and
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | instead you have made one shorter than the other --
| Play: d...@cowlark.com | the opposite." --- Sir Boyle Roche
+- http://www.cowlark.com -+
D. Gascoyne
> There's a short sequence in Michael Scott Rohan's _Cloud Castles_ where
> Fisher encounters an ancient Greek sailor. Lands his helicopter on his
> deck, actually. Among the other things that the sailor says to him is:
>
> `beta upsilon gamma gamma epsilon rho <space> omega phi phi'
>
> Rendered in the apropriate font, of course.
>
Heh. that's good.
D.
>