Ancient Languages - Blog Posts

writing monstrosities in my diary but it's okay because it's in latin and I'm using a glitter gel pen

si vis pacem para bellum but in the teenage girl going insane way

i just want to read every book ever written in the language it was originally written in. is that too much to ask for?

This is just all wrong.

Frist, in Biblical Hebrew the ending 'im' (ימ) is MASCULINE plural. Which could be its own discussion but the Scholarship is split so I won't go into that here.

Second, the word Elohim (אלהימ) is not "the name for the creative power in Genesis" it is a noun meaning 'god' or 'gods' and can refer to either the God of the Hebrews or false gods. It appears continuously in the Old Testament not just Genesis.

Thirdly, YHWH (יהןה) IS the name of God. And it doesn't appear much later it appears in Genesis 2 (and there are some suggestions as to why these chapters use different words for God but that's a different post).

'Al Shaddai' is actually 'el Shaddai' (אל שדד) the 'el' coming from 'elohim' and it means 'God Almighty'. While it does come later it is not a name for the God of the Bible.

The origin of the word Jehovah is very long but basically Jewish people would not say YHWH out loud and so would substitute the word 'adonai' (אדני) which means 'Lord' or 'Master' and can also refer to humans. Jehovah comes from the Latin of the Hebrew word that is produced when you take the vowels of 'adonai' and place them over the Hebrew letters YHWH. It is not a "mispronunciation" it is an evolution of a reading tradition.

(Edit: added tags.)

‹‹ Ό φίλος άλλος έαυτός ››

‹‹ The friend is another me. ›› said Phytagoras, showing a relationship of deep harmony between two persons, an unbreakable love and woven between the souls that melt inevitably.

Ancient greek world and its language descrive three different faces of love, all of them classifications that, according to Greeks, happen in human world: Ἔρως, Άγάπη, Φιλία (Eros, Agapee, Philia).

Eros means physical and passionable love, where it shows the desire to possess the other one and bases on a continuous give and receive.

Agape is, instead, celestial love, pure, bright that raises humans. A cosmic love that drive to desire the good for others before ours, that pushes to love every person beyond the fact that he/her/h* can deserve our love. It is, then, a love that sublimes, that makes you fly high, that asks for nothing in change because, as Kahlil Gibran said: "Love is enough for love" A disinterested love, trascendent and far from all selfishness. Near to charity, in fact, agape becomes God's love for the men, and from the men to God. It's a model of a relationship lighted by reciprocity, understood as overcoming of selfishness.

At the end, there's Philia, the friendship, brotherly love. A human love made of pure affection, attraction and sympathy, characterised by a feeling of joy that you can feel staying with the other. A love knows how to lull, confort and protect.

Greeks were very wise to distinguish every kind of love in a maniacal way.

here down different types for saying "I love you" in ancient greece.

Ψυχὴ καί Θανατος (psyche kai thanatos) would whisper uninhibited greek women during sex. The translation loses his meaning (You're my soul and my death), but along with aspirates and assonances, they made it a powerful aphrodisiac.

Διαπετομαι, "fly" or, as we say today, "cum". "To make love" can be translated with κατεύδειν.

Σοι φλήγω, "glow of love for you". It's a clue of strong passion, generally led by Eros. Then the fault is Eros': Ἔρως επὴ μοι κατεθεχατο τοχα καί ιὺς, for "Eros sharpened me with arches and arrows), but these are better for poetry than in the bed.

Τιτροσκώ συ πὸθω means "I'm pierced by desire for you". It means the moment of excitement before love.

Ση πειρώ, in military words can mean being pierced from side to side with a sword, then it specialized also in erotc sense, with the meaning of "I'm pierced of love for you".

The Theocritus Χος ιδον ος εμανην "As I saw you, I god mad" like the formula for "since I first saw you".

Μαινόμαι επή σὸι, "I'm crazy for you".

Σιουναρπαζεις, e.g "You stole my soul" express the strenght and the speed of amorous ignition that in an all-encompassing way hit the loved one.

But fortunately Love is not only pain and absolute passion: ιανεις καρδιαν , means "You warm my heart".

Σ'ηρώ is exactly our "I love you": commonly, less recent, more polyvalent: if instead of common feelings, you can say Σ'αγαπώ; in more carnal and heroic way (only Homer and Archilochus used it) you can say Σ'ηραμαι.

Σοι τερπομαι, means "I'm happy when I'm with you", to a friend, a son or a dear, you can name them with Σε φιλώ, e.g "I love you".

‹‹ Καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός ››

‹‹ beautiful and good ››

In Ancient Greece kindness and beauty go hand in hand. Valorous Heroes and Powerful Gods are always described with a particular beauty and their brightness is one of the most important characteristic.

In Homer's Greek, eyes are sparkling, the skin is bright and etc, those aspects are translated as "blue eyes", "milky white skin", "golden hair". Lexicon of the colours in ancient greek is also pretty problematic, more than the real shades of eyes and hair, in those texts what matters is properly the level of brightness, because Deities are associated to light, so that Gods and Demi-gods shine.

Also in the next eras the binomial "good and beautiful" benefits of great success: in the greek arts, where beauty canons require beautiful and regular lineaments, also in portraiture of real persons, who appear all uniformly beautiful, similar and without defects (wrinkles, moles, receding hairline...)

Pretty different is, however, Roman portraiture, that goes to realism and made it its main goal.

In Homeric Poems, ugliness and deformity are associated to the viles, untrustworthy, envious. Later, the discourse is modified, because ugliness becomes an allegory and is applied to monsters fought by heroes.

"The strenght of the good is refugee in the nature of the Beautiful", wrote Platon. The beauty of physique corresponds to the moral perfection, according ancient greeks.

πάθει μάθος

< paa-they maa-thos >

"Suffer to understand"

- Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Famous quotes expressed in a memorial way in Agamemnon of Aeschylus, when the chorus intones the famous Zeus' Hymn.

" But who to Zeus with joy raises the epinikion shout Will bring fully the widsom to Zeus who led the mortals to be wise, who put as solid law "widsom through pain" also in the sleep oozes before the heart an anguish mindful of sorrows: well as who does not, widsome comes. "

Aeschylus faces theme like evil, pain and fear that hit men in their intimacy relationships with Deities and society. According to a first conception of evil and pain, they were determined only by Gods' envy, the Hybris (hy-brys), but later they gained a new value, becoming an instrument to educate men to justice, since only through the pain they can ackwonledge deep inside themselves.

The tragic experience is, according to Greeks, internalization of knowledge. Aristotle few times emphasises how the pain leads the men "from no-knowledge to knowledge."

By the way, no one can escape from the face-off of the pain. How Greek widsome teaches us, one must be courageous and accept the involvement in it: what is next is the greatest mystery which we go against.

ῥαθαπυγίζω

I give kick in the ass

Νειλοθερής

Toasted by the sultry Egypt’s weather

ρθροφοιτοσυκοφαντοδικοπαλαίπωροι, τρόποι

The unhappy habit to get up in the early morning to attend tribunals dealing with (stupid) judgments and convictions

συμμετεωροπολέω

I go through celestial regions along with.