I suppose they could have easily traced it back to you if you had opted for 'moros gar mora legei'. Well played, Mr. Blood.
If you see another spot, please etch the peace sign, heart, and star in it for me. A bit of Filosofy with our Phoolishness, and all that rot...
How are your Hebrew studies going? I've been working hard on the other side of the fence. We should both study hard and plan a trip to search for the veritable 'linguistic headwaters of the Nile'!!
I've been studying Biblical Hebrew, not modern Hebrew, so I don't know the word for soap, though I know a lot of words that mean smite or strike down. But Lawrence, the guy I'm studying with, has a book that argues that etymologists stop at Greek or Latin, but never continue back to Hebraic roots. For instance, the raven, in Hebrew 'orev, who disappears mysteriously from the Flood story, apparently flew to old German as rav, and so to raven. (Though the word ravenous is actually unrelated, as it turns out.) The crow and other members of the corvid family take their name from the Hebrew word kara, meaning call. In fact--guess what--it turms out everything comes from a Hebrew word. Why not.
I imagine there are however numerous cognates between Hebrew and Arabic, shalom and salaam e.g. I would actually love to learn Arabic, as well as Farsi and Turkish, while I'm up, or at least learn the Arabic alphabet, because it's so pretty.
They've been digging up the street in our whole neighborhood since June, for purposes unclear to me. If I can find another patch of wet cement, though, your sign will be on it.
In arabic, soap is 'sabun', not an english cognate but a nice french one, which is fun if you're into that kind of thing. Saturday is 'sabit', which gets us back toward the Hebrew. I definitely want to push beyond the arabic myself, since I have had the pleasure of hearing lots of different european languages and trying to piece together some understanding based on my knowledge of french and german. I wind up sounding stupid, of course, but I enjoy myself doing it. Moron Rules, after all.
The arabic alphabet is a complete TRIP!! Just trying to sound out words for an hour or two will absolutely put your brain in a place it has never been before. I can't recommend it strongly enough!
Your friend's etymology reminds of the the (only worthwhile) scene in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding', when the grand-dad is explaining how all words come from the greek, and one of the neighbor kids asks him about 'kimono'. Not that funny, but more creative than the rest of the movie.
I thought of that same Greek grandfather character, actually, when Lawrence first showed me the book. It reminded me of my dad pointing out Jewish sports stars to me..."and you know, Sandy Koufax wouldn't play on Yom Kippur, even though it was the World Series.."
My Hebrew is probably close to my Greek when I was in school. I'm roughly familiar with the conjugations but have very little vocabulary, and if I go slowly with a dictionary and a translation I can pick my through the text, guessing correctly maybe 70% let's say of the obscure verb forms. I can sight read something like "And Noah went out, his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him" (Gen. 8:18). Sadly, there's no "Tutti Verbu Graeci", or rather "Tutti Verbu Ebraici", nor, the greater loss, do I have fellow-students with a taste for elaborately Victorian turns of phrase.
6 comments:
I suppose they could have easily traced it back to you if you had opted for
'moros gar mora legei'. Well played, Mr. Blood.
If you see another spot, please etch the peace sign, heart, and star in it for me. A bit of Filosofy with our Phoolishness, and all that rot...
How are your Hebrew studies going? I've been working hard on the other side of the fence. We should both study hard and plan a trip to search for the veritable 'linguistic headwaters of the Nile'!!
Find many cognates? How do you say 'soap'?
I've been studying Biblical Hebrew, not modern Hebrew, so I don't know the word for soap, though I know a lot of words that mean smite or strike down. But Lawrence, the guy I'm studying with, has a book that argues that etymologists stop at Greek or Latin, but never continue back to Hebraic roots. For instance, the raven, in Hebrew 'orev, who disappears mysteriously from the Flood story, apparently flew to old German as rav, and so to raven. (Though the word ravenous is actually unrelated, as it turns out.) The crow and other members of the corvid family take their name from the Hebrew word kara, meaning call. In fact--guess what--it turms out everything comes from a Hebrew word. Why not.
I imagine there are however numerous cognates between Hebrew and Arabic, shalom and salaam e.g. I would actually love to learn Arabic, as well as Farsi and Turkish, while I'm up, or at least learn the Arabic alphabet, because it's so pretty.
They've been digging up the street in our whole neighborhood since June, for purposes unclear to me. If I can find another patch of wet cement, though, your sign will be on it.
In arabic, soap is 'sabun', not an english cognate but a nice french one, which is fun if you're into that kind of thing. Saturday is 'sabit', which gets us back toward the Hebrew. I definitely want to push beyond the arabic myself, since I have had the pleasure of hearing lots of different european languages and trying to piece together some understanding based on my knowledge of french and german. I wind up sounding stupid, of course, but I enjoy myself doing it. Moron Rules, after all.
The arabic alphabet is a complete TRIP!! Just trying to sound out words for an hour or two will absolutely put your brain in a place it has never been before. I can't recommend it strongly enough!
peace, salaam, shalom,
jim
Your friend's etymology reminds of the the (only worthwhile) scene in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding', when the grand-dad is explaining how all words come from the greek, and one of the neighbor kids asks him about 'kimono'. Not that funny, but more creative than the rest of the movie.
I thought of that same Greek grandfather character, actually, when Lawrence first showed me the book. It reminded me of my dad pointing out Jewish sports stars to me..."and you know, Sandy Koufax wouldn't play on Yom Kippur, even though it was the World Series.."
My Hebrew is probably close to my Greek when I was in school. I'm roughly familiar with the conjugations but have very little vocabulary, and if I go slowly with a dictionary and a translation I can pick my through the text, guessing correctly maybe 70% let's say of the obscure verb forms. I can sight read something like "And Noah went out, his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him" (Gen. 8:18). Sadly, there's no "Tutti Verbu Graeci", or rather "Tutti Verbu Ebraici", nor, the greater loss, do I have fellow-students with a taste for elaborately Victorian turns of phrase.
Surely this is all leading back to Sanskrit, and a visit to Mumbai.
Patch is birthing today. Two little squealers have their birthday so far.
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