[HN Gopher] Documenting Aramaic before its native speakers vanis...
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Documenting Aramaic before its native speakers vanish (2013)
Author : Tomte
Score : 86 points
Date : 2022-06-26 04:11 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| lordleft wrote:
| My family is what is called St. Thomas Christian, part of a
| (fairly) endogamous and ancient community in South India. Though
| there is a lot of denomination diversity in the community these
| days, the most ancient denomination is Syrian Orthodox, which
| conducts its liturgy in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. This
| language is part of my linguistic heritage, even though I only
| know a word here or there.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Once the native speakers vanish, they can then go back and
| retranslate the new testament to read whatever they want it to,
| and only greybeard scholars could argue against it. Not that they
| haven't made X numbers of versions already
| wl wrote:
| * The New Testament is written in Koine Greek, not Aramaic.
|
| * Even if we consider the portions of the Bible written in
| Aramaic (i.e. parts of the Old Testament), speakers 2,000+
| years after the fact are speaking a different form of the
| language whose value to understanding older texts is limited
| and not straightforward.
|
| * Theologically significant translation difficulties in the New
| Testament are overblown.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Part of the Old Testament is in Aramaic though (parts of
| Daniel and Ezra IIRC)
| mbg721 wrote:
| What is the practical difference between Koine and Attic
| Greek? Is one more academic and the other more colloquial?
| vgel wrote:
| Attic Greek was the dialect of Attica (around Athens)
| before Alexander, c 500 - 300BC. Koine was the vernacular
| that spread around the Hellenistic world after Alexander's
| conquests, was used to write the New Testament and in the
| Eastern Roman Empire / Byzantine Empire.
|
| Attic survived as a literary / prestige dialect because
| important philosophical works and plays and such were
| written in it, but it was the vernacular of the region when
| those plays, etc. were written.
|
| The general progression of Greek, very simplified, can be
| said to be Homeric -> Attic / Ionic / other dialects ->
| Koine (mostly from Attic & Ionic) -> Medieval -> Modern
| kgeist wrote:
| Homeric was IIRC a pretty artificial poetic idiom with
| vocabulary from different dialects, I wouldn't say it's
| the ancestor of Attic, at least in the form which was
| written down. Also you forgot Mycenean Greek.
| themikejr wrote:
| The new testament is written in Koine Greek, not Aramaic. There
| are a few Aramaic phrases in the Greek texts we have and they
| are often accompanied by a translation or explanation in Greek.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's all Greek to me
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Funny enough, in Greece they say it's all Chinese to me.
| And in China they say..
| eesmith wrote:
| Heavenly Script. There's an old graphviz chart about the
| connections, at
| https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1024 . Someone
| should update it with the more complete list now at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me .
| bee_rider wrote:
| Neat list. I wonder how old the German expression
| "Polnisch ruckwarts" ( Polish [spoken] in reverse) is. I
| wonder if it has anything to do with Reverse Polish
| Notation.
| eesmith wrote:
| Google Books found an example in the 1965 book "Sprache
| und Humor des Kindes". However, it does not appear to
| have anything to do with "Polnisch ruckwarts".
|
| While the term "Polish Notation" predates 1965, including
| in German as "polnische Notation", it appears to be in a
| specialized context not related to children's humor.
|
| The only other Google Books reference for "Polnisch
| ruckwarts" is a 1982 reference with nothing to do with
| computers.
|
| Looking in archive.org, here's a 1984 German computer
| magazine which describes FORTH as ,,polnisch ruckwarts".
| https://archive.org/details/cpm-anwenderhandbuch-thom-
| hogana...
|
| On the other hand, a 1986 article uses a different
| structure, at https://archive.org/details/hc-mein-home-
| computer_1986-10/pa... :
|
| > Der Programmiersprache Forth eilt das Schlagwort
| ,,umgekehrt polnische Notation" voraus, was ein wenig wie
| ,,polnisch ruckwarts" klingt und auf den ersten Blick
| meist als Ruckschritt gewertet wird.
|
| Those are the only two uses of that phrase in
| archive.org. By comparison, "polnische Notation" is far
| more common.
| pcwalton wrote:
| A huge amount of field linguistics is documentation of languages
| that are in danger of losing all their native speakers. Many
| Native American languages are in this category, for instance--
| it's common for these languages to have only a handful of native
| speakers left, all of whom are elderly. It's literally a race
| against the clock.
| auiya wrote:
| At that point does the language become archived?
| intrepidhero wrote:
| > The traditional aim of fieldwork is to produce for
| undocumented languages what linguists sometimes call "the
| holy trinity": a grammar, which is a road map to sounds,
| syntax and structure; texts, which are chunks of unedited
| speech that reveal a language's texture; and a dictionary.
| pcwalton wrote:
| In some cases, they try to use that knowledge to teach the
| language to new generations so that it doesn't totally die
| out. Wasiw (Washoe) is an example that one of my professors
| worked on:
| https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/where-wasiw-
| spo...
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Yes. What little of it remains however. Much of the worlds
| languages are disappearing permanently. There is a small
| movement for foreign individuals to learn dying tongues and
| for some descendants to learn, but I would not expect this to
| counteract the prevailing homogenization of language
| globally. Regional differences in dialect can become new
| languages over time, but I don't expect this to countermand
| the number of languages lost in recent times to colonization
| and the cultural dominance of certain countries and
| languages.
| FredPret wrote:
| I'm part of the problem here. My kids will never learn my
| first language. English has become the language of
| technology, and will probably become even more dominant as
| a result.
| chimineycricket wrote:
| How old are your kids? The solution (if they're still
| babies) is to simply speak to your kids in your first
| language all the time. The brain does the rest. You don't
| have to "teach" them anything.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The solution (if they're still babies) is to simply
| speak to your kids in your first language all the time.
|
| No need for them to be babies. That will work as long as
| they're younger than 12, and probably for a few years
| after. But if the kids have already learned to speak
| another language, they will _hate_ this approach.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| There are a lot of languages at risk of totally going extinct.
| UNESCO keeps a list of them, but the link has ironically also
| gone dead.
|
| https://www.unesco.org/sites/default/files/medias/fichiers/2...
| dpq wrote:
| I find it somewhat disappointing how cautiously the author avoids
| the subject on how Assyrians got "...scattered over the past
| century from homelands where their language once flourished". It
| wasn't just an unfortunate occasion when "a Kurdish chieftain
| murdered a Church of the East patriarch there in 1918". It was a
| genocide.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayfo
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Shhh it's politically incorrect to question exactly how all the
| Christians in the Middle East disappeared... Copts, Chaldeans,
| Assyrians, etc... were all displaced and/or slaughtered by
| invading Islamic armies.
| bergenty wrote:
| No it's not, this is pretty well known and discussed. Don't
| try and make a straw man because you want to paint "liberals"
| and Muslims in a bad light.
|
| You could have just replied with your second sentence... but
| you have an agenda.
| catawbasam wrote:
| Nope. My kid got taught about the evil Crusaders attacking
| the innocent Muslims.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > No it's not, this is pretty well known and discussed
|
| It definitely isn't. Tons of people think Arabs are
| actually native to Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, etc... or
| that Turks are native to Turkey/Anatolia. Most Americans
| and Western Europeans have no clue about the history of
| Christianity in the Middle East and Turkey, Arab conquests,
| etc... Or the fact that Christians were still a majority in
| a Middle Eastern country within the last 100 years.
| liorben-david wrote:
| I think you're reading too much into the omission of
| historical narrative in this particular article about
| linguistics. The author, Ariel Sabar, wrote an entire book
| about his father's forced exile from his native Kurdistan by
| the Iraqi government.
| astrange wrote:
| Luckily the Chaldeans are now starring in the world's
| highest-earning mobile game.
| oofnik wrote:
| I was once hosted by a Syrian Jewish family for Passover. Their
| rendition of the classic _had gadya_ (lit. "one goat") in the
| traditional melody brought over with them from Aleppo was
| hauntingly beautiful.
| samstave wrote:
| DUOLINGO (or some equiv) - should be actively going after all
| languages that will go dark at some point and building courses
| around them.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _How to Save a Dying Language (2013)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20557429 - July 2019 (16
| comments)
|
| _How to Save a Dying Language_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9366347 - April 2015 (3
| comments)
| orionblastar wrote:
| Make a Rosetta Stone type project for it.
|
| There was this Yiddish/Hebrew program for the Mac, but the
| programmer died and nobody has the source code and it stopped
| working.
|
| Make it free or open source so it can continue with the Aramaic
| language.
| Delk wrote:
| A lot of the value of various languages is in the cultural
| nuances that are both expressed by the language and a part of
| it. Sometimes the nuances are in the spoken form, and properly
| understanding all the nuances would require living among the
| culture.
|
| A translator program might be an interesting project in some
| other ways, and I guess technology might help some people get
| involved with the language or help bridge the gap. A translator
| doesn't really solve the problem, though.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >it stopped working
|
| Can always run it on a VM unless it requires connection to some
| server to function.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Even young America has this issue: Appalachian, the dialects in
| Newfoundland, island pidgins, Cajun are all diminishing.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Is Appalachian a _language_ , or a _dialect_?
|
| (I guess I'm assuming, first, that there is a reasonably sharp
| distinction, and second, that Aramaic falls into the "language"
| category.)
| x3iv130f wrote:
| Language vs dialect is a political question, not a scientific
| one.
|
| There are plenty of mutually unintelligible dialects and
| plenty of mutually intelligible languages.
| the_biot wrote:
| My personal opinion, not a linguist:
|
| All languages start as dialects, and the point at which they
| become a separate language is arbitrary, more a matter of
| opinion than a hard rule.
|
| Languages are created by people speaking another language
| badly.
| liorben-david wrote:
| Not sure why he omits this, but the author's name is Ariel Sabar
| and his father is Yona Sabar who is the one of the most
| influential scholars in the preservation of Aramaic.
|
| I would highly recommend Ariel's book, My Father's Paradise. It
| documents the life of his father being born into the poor and
| uneducated, but happy, Jewish community of Kurdish Iraq, being
| stripped of his property and exiled by the Iraqi government as
| part of the Jewish exodus in the 50s, and going from a refugee to
| a PHD in Linguistics from Yale.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| This article reads very strangely. Aramaic at least the Jewish
| Babylonian dialect is extremely alive. Children learn it in
| school, and thousands and thousands of adults study texts every
| day written in Aramaic.
| margalabargala wrote:
| The same is true of Latin, but that's still considered a "dead"
| language. It's not the same to learn to read something for
| scholarly reasons, vs using it as one's native tongue.
| [deleted]
| mike10921 wrote:
| It's being studied but none of these kids/adults use it as a
| day-to-day language.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| And the Syriac Orthodox Church still uses Syriac, which is a
| dialect of Aramaic.
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