The modern understanding of Ancient Greek
vj...@biostrategist.com
much, they open themselves to the Metternichian criticism that they
are no longer Greeks. Israel revived a two-thousand year-dead
language as its official language. This is not to say that the
politically-imposed Katharevusa or Demotic are natural languages, the
way Kathemilumeni is. Also, since no translation is ever perfect,
when you change a language, you deprive your progeny of the culture
that accompanied it. The fewer people that actively speak a
near-biblical Greek today, not just in a religious context, then the
more dead, one-dimensional and useless the results of our attempts to
rely on the results of reading ancient texts.
Secondly, cantankerous Greeks resist dealing with Ecclesiastic
Greek the way stuck-up Brits would not resist Ecclesiastic English,
even though the two are roughly equidistant from the languages
respectively spoken today. The reason this is so is the appearance of
a body of literature tends to freeze changes in a language, so
Classical Greek and Elizabethan English are roughly at equivalent
levels of the dvelopment of each language. Also, there is an important
dischronistic mistake made by a sloppiness in distinguishing between
the generic term "archaic" and the specific "Ancient Greek" where
changes that took place in preHomeric Greek end up being applied
almost a millenium later by people whose level of education suggests
they should know better. Particularly farcical are the "Erasmian"
errors of W Sydney allen who admits he discarded Hindu evidence
contradicting his conclusions on ypsilon - perhaps because he views
Greek too much as a sister of latin and not at all in its eastern
context (there was also ample Hebrew evidence he did nt look at). I
say this as someone who was required to read original German-like
Beowulf and French-like Chaucer in prep school, and as someone who
once heard a Constantinople Jewish mathematician say how glad he was
to speak to my parents because he doesn't get to speak real Greek
since USA immigrants badly speak it.
The following analogy, I feel, roughly applies: LinearB:Homer:
Classical:Koine:Kathemilumeni::Beowulf:Chaucer:Shakespeare:KJV:Modern.
- = -
Vasos-Peter John Panagiotopoulos II, Columbia'81+, Bio$trategist
BachMozart ReaganQuayle EvrytanoKastorian
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/vjp2/vasos.htm
vjp2@{MCIMail.Com|CSI.Com|Panix.Com|BioStrategist.Com} VP...@Columbia.Edu
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
--{vjp2 was formerly on dorsai (1995-2000), delphi (1994) and bix (1989)}--
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NKrinis
Νικος Κρινης
Raymond Brisebois
(Shakespeare)
rB
NKrinis <n...@nospam.nbnet.nb.ca> wrote in message news:<3B32F4EF...@nospam.nbnet.nb.ca>...
Voyager
Raymond Brisebois
> Τι πραμα ???
[Ti prama ???] I couldn't 'prama' or a similar root in my
dictionary? What is your question?
>
> Raymond Brisebois <rjl...@magma.ca> wrote
>
> Το ροδο κατα την αλλα ονομα κανεις;
>
> (Shakespeare)
[To rodo kata ta alla onoma kaneis?] = my attempt at putting into
Greek
"A rose by any other name"? (by Shakespeare)
in commentary to Nikias':
> > Αερας κοπανιστος απο την ιδια πηγη.
[Aeras kopanistos apo thn idia phgh]
'A pounding wind from the same source' (my attempt at translating the
Greek)
Xaire,
rB