Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 July 9

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July 9

language, use of adjective: "the text below"

The "text below" is right, but don't adjectives come before the noun in English? Why isn't it the "below text"?--Quest09 (talk) 10:56, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Because it's not an adjective, but an adverb. — Emil J. 10:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

No, it's an adjective ("below" modifies the noun "text"). Adjectives do sometimes follow nouns in English, though that's less common. In the case of "below," a position after the noun sounds better because a position after the noun makes it easier to tell that "below" is functioning as an adjective and not as a preposition. John M Baker (talk) 17:39, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe that explanation: do you have a cite?

As for the original question, I looked at the first 5 dictionary hits on "below" at www.onelook.com; 4 out of 5 say it's a adverb, although one (Merriam-Webster) calls it an adjective. I think it's really a special construction with its own rules: in other words, an idiom. --Anonymous, 19:50 UTC, July 9, 2009.

Interesting one. It seems to be in the same class of expressions as "the email attached", "the explanation following", "the paragraph above", etc. We can switch the order with those examples: "the attached email", "the following explanation", "the above paragraph". But "the text below" can't be switched to "the below text". Same as "This man here" can't be rendered as "This here man". That's because "here" is an adverb and can't be used as an adjective. That seems to suggest "above" can be an adjective or an adverb, but "below" is an adverb only. How discriminatory for nether-dwellers. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:05, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

There yet remain some folks who resist "the above paragraph." One style guide I have says, "Rules barring the use of above as an adjective have been modified. Sir Ernest Gowers's revision of Fowler says that there is no ground for 'pedantic' criticism of the use […] Nevertheless, many careful writers still prefer to say 'the illustration given above' rather than 'the above illustration.'" Deor (talk) 11:36, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed: never "this here man". But sometimes "this here parrot [what I purchased not half an hour ago...]" appears in variants of the MPPS. Bazza (talk) 14:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

"This here" (often pronounced more like "this'er") is used somewhat frequently in southern/rural United States as a dialect variant, with the "here" acting as an intensifier. (e.g. with one farmer introducing someone to another farmer: "Jeb, this here man from the bank wants to talk t' ya.") -- 128.104.112.84 (talk) 18:04, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

"This here" and "that there" would usually not be used for ""text below". That would be "the text as what's following here." (There are various other ways of saying it.)71.236.26.74 (talk) 11:42, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Do they translate the Greek New Testament in Greece?

Hi, in Greece, do they use modern Greek translations of the New Testament, or do they use the Koine, with footnotes, like the way we might read Shakespeare or Mallory? I know there exist modern translations of the NT, but that may be for the average student; I'm curious whether an educated Greek could read the original text with the aid of footnotes. Thanks in advance, It's been emotional (talk) 12:56, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't have an answer, but I have a related question: are there translations of the Tanakh (Old Testament) into Modern Israeli Hebrew? Or can your average educated Israeli read Biblical Hebrew as easily as educated English-speakers can read the King James Version? +Angr 13:50, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Here is an article about a "translation" of the Torah into modern Hebrew. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:43, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the more or less "standard" translation of the New Testament into Hebrew (a slight updating of Franz Delitzsch's work) is in quasi-"Biblical" Hebrew, and not in modern Israeli Hebrew... AnonMoos (talk) 11:39, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

As an Israeli I can tell you that the differences between Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew are not that big, and don't prevent the isrealis (even the youth) from understanding the Bible (mainly the first Books, less than the Prophet Books), though when reading it the Israelis feel that it's rather archaic. However, modern literature uses frequently the biblical language (or at least a mixture of biblical and modern properties of Hebrew), so the readers can't always decide whether what they read is an archaic (comprehensible) language or a high literature. For example, when the Israeli children read (in Psalms, 119) the original phrase "Blessed art thou" in biblical Hebrew, they comprehend it more easily than the english speakers who read the same phrase in Old English. That's why the modern translations of Old Testament into Modern Hebrew are quite rare and not that popular. The Israelis think that such translations (mainly for the first biblical Books) are simply needless.

Anyways, "difficult" Books like Book of Job are usually written in a language which sounds exceedingly archaic, and most of the Israelis can't understand such Books without assistance of interpretation. However, they don't use (rare) modern "translations" but rather refer to the classic interpretors. HOOTmag (talk) 10:43, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I once answered a similar question in the past, so I'll repeat the opinion I expressed then, which is that modern Greeks would have the utmost difficulty in getting anything at all from an ancient text. I once read that Greek has changed less since Homer than English has since Chaucer, which impressed me at the time. Since then, after decades of reading Classical Greek, I have begun to learn the modern language and I am convinced that this opinion is way off beam. The entire structure of the language has been revolutionised, and only bits of ancient vocabulary (in my opinion) would be comprehensible to a modern Greek. Indeed, the highly educated native Greek speaker who has been teaching me the modern language is completely unable to make sense of any ancient text I put in front of him. Maid Marion (talk) 14:41, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

But remember that the New Testament as we have it (though probably not all of its source documents) was written in (and the Torah translated into, as the Septaguint) Koine Greek, not Classical Greek. According to its article, many of the changes from Classical to Modern Greek were already underway in Koine, so its distance from Modern Greek is appreciably less, hence "As most of the changes between modern and ancient Greek were introduced via Koine, Koine is largely intelligible to speakers of the modern language." 87.81.230.195 (talk) 15:01, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

A couple, who were both classics professors where I did my undergrad work, told us of the time they were vacationing in Greece. They were having fun pronouncing street signs and whatnot, and hadn't figured out yet how different classical and modern Greek are. They were touring Athens, conducted by a coach driver and a tour guide, and those two seemed to have a great rapport between them. My professor tried to ask if they were married, but the vocabulary has drifted... he asked them if they... um... do something that married couples are assumed to do. Hilarity ensued. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:58, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The Greek Orthodox Church does not use Modern Greek in the bible. It still uses the original Greek text for the New Testament (see this, near the bottom). However, there are some Evangelical Greeks, and I don't know whether they use the Koine text, or if they have Modern Greek translations. The words (in the Orthodox Church) are not footnoted that I've ever seen. I should also say that the Greek of the bible is read and pronounced as in Modern Greek in the Greek Church. And many of the words are the same or are obviously cognates of Modern Greek words. -- Flyguy649 ^talk 06:41, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I know that it is done (I happen to own such a translation), but I do not know if the use of Modern Greek bibles is widespread. One translation can be found here, although it appears to be "classicizing" (katharevousa?). Iblardi (talk) 14:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The entire liturgical tradition is still carried through in Koine, and the best-known prayers etc. are memorized by heart. From my experience with religion classes at school, we used only the Koine versions of the Bible. The Koine of the Septuagint is by itself very close to modern Greek, and since most Byzantine prayers are of an even later date, most Greeks should be able to understand them, at least after graduating from school, where we take classes in Ancient Greek (both Attic and Koine). Granted, no one would be able to quite understand philosophical texts or the highly polished and elaborate language used in epigrams, but in my experience, most prayers and ordinary texts are quite easy to understand. Constantine ✍ 10:34, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

PS, the older generations have it easier, since the Katharevousa was actually closer to the Koine than Demotic Greek. Sadly, the knowledge of archaic forms (as well as correct orthography) has declined dramatically recently, even among philologists. Constantine ✍ 10:37, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

aramaic portions of the bible in interlinear translation

Hi, I recently bought an excellent interlinear Bible, in Hebrew and Greek with interlinear English, but it does not contain any portions in Aramaic. This struck me as rather strange: we all know parts of the OT are in Aramaic (eg. in the book of Daniel), and surely the point of an interlinear Bible is to get the complete original text in a form that we can use without knowing those languages. Can you get interlinear Bibles in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, ie. with every part of the Bible in its original language? It's been emotional (talk) 14:54, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

What does your Bible do for those portions of Daniel etc. that are in Aramaic? Just skip over them? +Angr 15:04, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

They are in the Bible, but I was assuming they were translated into Hebrew, since there is no mention of Aramaic in the introduction. My Bible uses the Masoretic text, which, from what I can tell, may actually have Aramaic in it, which would basically void the question. It is certainly transliterated into Hebrew, but the alphabets are essentially the same, even though they differ in their conventional orthography as given in textbooks. The orthographic conventions have sprung up in modern (New Testament) times, anyway, so perhaps I have had the Aramaic originals all along, transliterated only for the sake of appropriate standardisation. Since I can't read either Aramaic or Hebrew, you may wonder why the heck I would bother with all this, but authenticity matters to me, and with an interlinear translation, I can refer to the original and look up key terms on the net if the exact translation has any bearing on a discussion. It's been emotional (talk) 10:44, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it's not standard practice at all to translate those passages. If you know just a little about the Hebrew alphabet, it's fairly easy to tell Biblical Hebrew apart from Biblical Aramaic, since Biblical Aramaic has a much higher proportion of words which end in the letter aleph א. (Aramaic also prefers -n endings where Hebrew has -m endings and makes much less use of prefixes beginning with h.) So if you compare the first five verses of Daniel chapter 1 with the first five verses of Daniel chapter 3, I count three words ending in aleph in the Hebrew verses, but 37 words ending with aleph in the Aramaic verses... AnonMoos (talk) 16:13, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's terrific :):). In that case, I do have a Hebrew/ Aramaic/ Greek Bible, that sells itself short by calling itself Hebrew/ Greek. This confirms what I had become fairly sure of after checking an Aramaic textbook, which thankfully listed some exact passages from Daniel, which I could match well enough to my copy. My aleph counts are slightly different, 3 and 35 respectively. For chapter 1, they are: verse 1, BA (came), verse 2, HBYA (he took into), and verse 3, LHBYA (bring to). Sorry if I've mucked anything up there in transliteration. Could you possibly tell me where the other two are? I'm thinking I must have missed a word division or two. Thanks for the help with this, since it completely resolves the issue. It's been emotional (talk) 14:42, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

See your user talk page... AnonMoos (talk) 19:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You may have to wait a bit, but they are planning to put the Dead Sea scrolls on the web. Once they have you can then probably compare various translations and interpretations online. They are said to be the oldest version in existence. 71.236.26.74 (talk) 17:06, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the Dead Sea scroll Biblical texts tend to be rather incomplete or fragmentary, with the conspicuous exception of Isaiah. They have been of great interest to philologists and textual historians, but most people who have not made a professional career of studying textual variants would find very little benefit from examining them in their raw form... AnonMoos (talk) 11:30, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Fuzzy Image German Text on 2009 BLEACH Anime

File:BleachEps227IshidaReadsGermanLit.JPG

The focus on this pic isn't very good, but I'm gonna go with German Text. This pic is two frames of an Anime called BLEACH, 7 mins into episode 227, Ishida is walking past the Cherry Blossoms in the School yard. Does anyone know what book this comes from? I wanna guess Kafka, but that's just a guess on the characters personality type.--i am the kwisatz haderach (talk) 20:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The picture is too blurry, making it almost impossible to glean much information. I (with 20/15 vision) can only confirm that the text is German as well as make out the occasional word. With the current picture, making out a sentence or two is almost impossible, let alone figuring out which book it comes from. Xenon54 (talk) 20:50, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Notice above his thumb, in these two pages, there's only one phrase in quotation. "Order ist ..." or "Ordung..." Maybe if we can figure whatever this phrase is, maybe its catchy, possible Google search, assuming its a book on Philosophy, we may come up with something. What do you think? Use you're web browser to zoom in. Cheers,--i am the kwisatz haderach (talk) 21:32, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I am looking at the wrong quote, but I don't see "Order/Ordnung" there. However I believe to see "K." and "Turm des Schlosses" which would hint at Kafka's "Der Prozess" (The Trial). "Das Schloss" (The Castle). There is mention of a "Turm" in the first chapter, though I could not really correlate the picture with the original text. Maybe it is just a book about Kafka? bamse (talk) 22:13, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

"Order" is only used in a few borrowed English phrases, so that can't be it. That word looks to me like "oder" ("or") more than "Ordnung" ("order"). I can make out one line just above his thumb: "Ein Turm der Sahme. Es lauft durch der Welt...der Turm dem Rueckgraten (something) wir zu fallen?" It speaks about the tower running through the world and the backbone of the tower collapsing. A Google search doesn't turn anything up with that exact wording. Xenon54 (talk) 23:03, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

This is what I can make out of the left page:

... wachen Ich ... eine Wolke und einen Lauf durch den ... aber es berührt die wahrheit noch nicht ... der Stossbahn [Stosszahn?] der nicht ankommt ... Beobachten Sie diesen Stern ... Kehle ... [Stein?]blindgänger schön zu sein. Es ist, weil wir Mittel ... der Grund ist, weil es nicht ohne die Angst ... vorwärts treten kann ... Schritt das ... jedesmal wenn ich einen Stüle aufgebe. Wie ... schritt weil weg von einem Tier, jedesmal wenn es ein Herz verdirbt ... Ein Türm der Sühne. Es lauft durch die Welt wie liebt ich ... Der türm des Rückgrates. Ist es wir zu fallen "Oder ist es [???]" ... Wiederwehen blass zu sagen ... wo die [???] Mähne, die ... zum dünnen. Ein ... keine Angst haben, dass es ... hat schon enden ... auf Betrug zu ...

I don't speak German, so there's a high probability I got some of it wrong. "Turm der Sühne" could be a reference to the Senzaikyū, which would make it in-universe. decltype (talk) 00:15, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

This page [1] makes it very likely the text is in-universe. You could try asking here for confirmation [2] (You'd have to register to ask a question.) 71.236.26.74 (talk) 11:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

What does this t-shirt say?

File:Mystery t-shirt.jpg

Please tell me it doesn't say "Dumb American paid $15 US for this rag"

...besides "wash me", that is. Thank you, in advance. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:54, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Possibly the same as 夢　(yume) = dream/vision/illusion. I am not good at reading calligraphy though. bamse (talk) 21:25, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

It says 梦[夢], "mèng", "dream".

See wikt:梦 --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 22:55, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:06, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Debussy and Chouchou

This morning, a radio announcer was talking about a work by Claude Debussy, dedicated to his daughter Chouchou. He said "Debussy died in 1918. Tragically, Chouchou lived only one year longer than her father."

My immediate sense (although I wasn't 100% sure) was that Chouchou died only a year after Debussy did. I have confirmed this from our article; he died in 1918, aged 56, and she died in 1919, aged only 14.

Out of context, "Chouchou lived one year longer than her father" would mean that her lifespan was one year greater than his was, which would have had her dying in c. 1962 (44 years after he died, not one year after he died). But the words "tragically" and "only" seem to give the game away. It's not about lifespans, but about how much time intervened between her father's death and her own death - only one year. The announcer could have omitted "tragically", in which case "only" would be left to provide all the context.

Is what the announcer said the best way of saying what he intended to mean, without getting into pedantic specificity inappropriate for relaxed listening? Or am I just overanalysing this? If it had been me (? I), I would probably have opted for "Tragically, Chouchou died only a year after her father". -- JackofOz (talk) 21:41, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I haven't anything to contribute to this thread, but I want you to know, Jack, that I'm with you 100% this time! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 22:37, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

My guess is that whoever wrote the radio script was trying to say "Tragically, Chouchou survived her father by only one year" and just muddled it up. Deor (talk) 23:32, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

That's what I thought. Thanks. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:59, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I could grumble about sloppy use of tragic. —Tamfang (talk) 17:59, 20 July 2009 (UTC)