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> "Err... little timmy and his virtual assistant appear to have entirely neglected maths in favour of adopting Zoroastrianism". Hehe, had to re-read this twice
by rpastuszak 4y ago
> "Err... little timmy and his virtual assistant appear to have entirely neglected maths in favour of adopting Zoroastrianism".
Hehe, had to re-read this twice because it hits a little close to home. I ditched maths for Iranian Studies and ended up studying Avesta. I work in tech, but still remember Ashem Vohu by heart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashem_Vohu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashem_Vohu
- eternalban 4y agoHow cool. (Iranian born here.) So curious on your take on the meaning of that prayer. How would you translate it?
- kkarimi 4y agoThat’s wonderful! I have a similar background and am also surprised at how I learnt and still remember it even though it is quite distant from modern Persian
- rpastuszak 4y agoYeah, I imagine it's closer to Pashto than modern Iranian tbf. Ossetian is another outlier here, close to Georgia/Russia but related to the languages from Pamir/Tajikistan. Avestan (IIRC, my memory is fuzzy) had some weird similarities to my native language—Polish. Occasionally I'd stumble upon a phrase I could actually understand. Random example I just remembered: "both ears" (again IIRC) sounded like uba ushi /uba uši/ (uba being 2 in dual, ushi meaning ears). Polish used to have dual number, but now retained it mostly for some body parts ( oba == 2). Ears in PL is uszy /ushee/. You'd sound a bit weird saying saying "oba uszy" in Polish, but people would understand you. Nowadays I just enjoy the fact that Ashem Vohu is one of the oldest phrases I can utter in its original language. (I'm really good at learning and forgetting languages it seems.)