On 28/12/08 07:29, Ben Schmidt wrote:
>> My knowledge of CJK languages is spotty bordering on nonexistent
>
> Mine, too. I did learn Chinese, but only in primary school, so as I'm
> sure you can appreciate, I never reached a very high standard, and with
> the passage of about 13 years, even what I had has mostly gone, though I
> have picked up some more. It's on my to do list. Living in Australia,
> probably the most common language around here after English is Chinese
> (of one dialect or another, but that's another story!).
>
>>> Though you've well and truly exhausted my language repertoire. Apart
>>> from French, which you've taken, I only have biblical languages, and
>>> naturally, they have no word for Christmas...
>> Depends if you regard Syriac / Aramean as a "Biblical" language. And of
>> course Greek is the language of the New Testament, and _it_ certainly
>> has a word for Christmas.
>
> In this context, I regard as biblical languages those in which the Bible
> is written, i.e. Hebrew, Greek and a little Aramaic, not including
> descendent languages such as Modern Greek or Hebrew, nor others merely
> spoken in biblical times.
>
> By the way, the spelling of Christ is χριστος; certainly in biblical and
> classical Greek, and by the look of it also in Modern Greek (a quick
> glance at a Modern Greek Bible translation tells me). χρηστος is a
> different word meaning (at least in Koine Greek) generally 'useful' or
> 'beneficial' (in a concrete, or an abstract moral sense).
>
> Smiles,
>
> Ben.
Well, χρηστος is the classical, pre-iotacism spelling of a word which
used to mean "anointed" (as does the Hebrew Mashiakh, transliterated as
Messiah in the Gospels) and is related to the word "chreme" (χρημα)
which means the consecrated oil used for pouring over a new priest's or
king's head. In Modern Greek, and already in Biblical Greek, the vowels
eta and (when used as a vowel) upsilon, and the diphtongs epsilon-iota
and omicron-iota have all become homonyms of the vowel iota (when used
as a vowel), which has led to hesitation about the correct orthography
of many words.
Many words have also changed meaning between Classical and Modern Greek.
For instance, the ideal of the classical Greek hero was the καλος
καγαθος ανθρωπος, the "beautiful and good man", where καγαθος is a
contraction of και αγαθος; but then I was surprised to learn that in
Modern Greek, καλος means good rather than beatiful, and αγαθος stupid
rather than good! So a modern Greek would feel insulted rather than
complimented if named a "good and stupid man", unless maybe he had
pursued classical studies.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
A mathematician named Hall
Has a hexahedronical ball,
And the cube of its weight
Times his pecker's, plus eight
Is his phone number -- give him a call..
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