[HN Gopher] Documenting Aramaic before its native speakers vanis... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-28 23:01 UTC)