4 ms·

Greek Particles (1990)

60 points by veqq 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ggm 1y ago
A.k.A hesitation markers, non-lexical vocables, disfluence or nonfluence, filler.. It's entertaining how many different labels uh, well kinda um.. names I guess, er, anyway how many er ways to say these thingamabobs there, er, well are. Wikipedia posits that even neanderthals might have said Ummm.
- readthenotes1 1y ago
  Don't keep us hanging, what might the Neanderthals have said?
- veqq 1y ago
  > A.k.A hesitation markers, non-lexical vocables, disfluence or nonfluence, filler It's satirical.
MartinGAugustin 1y ago
[dead]
verisimi 1y ago
Strange article. Pretty sure the ancient greek translation is wrong in part too. They say: 'theōrhiā' means 'review', whereas it is obvious to me that it means 'theory'.
- arnsholt 1y ago
  The Speculative Granmarian is the premier journal of satirical linguistics, so that’s probably intentional. =)
- baruz 1y ago
  I assume you’re joking, but θεωρίᾱ does mean a “looking at” or “a beholding” or “contemplation” from the verb θεωρέω, “to look at” or “observe.” Aristotle liked to use it for speculation or “theorizing” in the mental sense, but apparently that was due to Pythagoras’s influence. Checked my Bolchazy-Carducci reprint of Crosby and Schaeffer, and they do indeed immediately gloss θεωρίᾱ as “review.”
  - stavros 1y ago
    Yes, "I want to propose a theory" literally means "I want to propose a way of looking at things", or "I want to propose a viewpoint".
Peteragain 1y ago
Apparently Tai uses quite a bit of infix (not prefixes, or suffixes, but infixes). In in English we have infixes, but they are all expletives of the Nixon style: "Kings-bloody-cross" (a railway station in Sydney), "absa-f..king-luteley" ...
- decimalenough 1y ago
  Semitic languages like Arabic & Hebrew have triconsonantal roots where the vowels dance around them to change meaning. k-t-b "to write" becomes kataba "he wrote", katib "writer", maktab "office", maktaba "library", istaktaba "had a copy made" etc etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_root https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_root
sapphicsnail 1y ago
I really wish English had something like Greek ge, which is something like a sarcasm/snark marker. Socrates uses it a lot.
- arnsholt 1y ago
  Oh, but English does have a sarcasm marker! It's just not a word, instead it's typically marked by using non-standard pronunciation like creaky voice or lengthening vowels. The problem is of course that this stuff doesn't have an orthography, thus the use of stuff like /s online.
- kgeist 1y ago
  Is it really a sarcasm marker? I've always thought it's equivalent to že in Slavic languages (both probably from the same PIE *g(h)e), and in those languages, it can be used sarcastically, but its main meaning is 'in fact', 'as for X'. For example in Russian: on že glup = 'he is, in fact, a fool' or 'as for him, he's a fool - didn't you know?' Similarly, dictionaries translate the Greek ge as 'in fact, indeed.' If you mentally replace most instances of Ancient Greek ge with the Slavic že in Greek texts, it all starts making a lot of sense (if you're a speaker of a Slavic language). P.S. There's also a limiting sense in the dictionary, with the example given: Greek: ho de ge (+ participle) Russian: tot že (kto) English: but the one (who)
baruz 1y ago
Lest anyone take this article at face value, please note that it was published in _Speculative Grammarian_, “the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics.” The range of meanings for the Greek entautha, gar, and de are all well-understood.
- arnsholt 1y ago
  Classical Greek is well outside my field, but one of the things I love about SpecGram when it deals with things I do know, the jokes also have a kernel of truth to them. And in other classical languages I'm more familiar with, there is (IMO) an argument to be made that the texts should be translated more "orally" than they frequently are. There are probably many reasons for this, but I think one of them is that because they are Classical and Important there's a sense of reverence that makes us want to translate them Seriously(tm). Of course you're entirely right that Greek particles are not some unfathomable mystery. The systematic study of Greek language goes back literal millenia, and the particles are well understood (unlike say Vedic Sanskrit particles).
  - dash2 1y ago
    So what trend in modern linguistics is this guy satirizing? Do they like to pretend that well-known things like entautha and oun are mysteries?
    - baruz 1y ago
      Not modern. Outsiders coming into the language (even for modern Greeks—the diglossia TFA mentions between spoken and written language in English existed for 1500+ years in Greek) find particles difficult to grasp, and the dictionary definitions do not really convey all the senses that the particles mean, like mathematics teaches from natural definitions of numbers progressing to Dedekind cuts. You know _Portuguese irregular verbs_, by Alexander McCall Smith, the comic novel where Dr. Professor von Igelfeld rests his reputation on a magisterial volume on the (strangely enough) Portuguese irregular verbs? Denniston’s _The Greek particles_ ultimately spans almost 700 pages after posthumous revisions (1960?). Page after page on individual particles. I think TFA satirizes that drive to squeeze every bit of meaning from the particles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewar_Denniston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewar_Denniston
nonrandomstring 1y ago
Editing audio interviews for podcast I sometimes remove lots of "particles" as the author calls them (I just call them "ums and ahs"), TFA poses a question. Do particles have "meaning"? Don't think I ever heard a discussion of that in any linguistics class, but they do have an effect. Working in radio/podcast you get quite a deep feel for speech as more than just words. I've heard there are effective "de-um" plugins, but I prefer to work with them by hand because they create non-verbal signals, mood, excitement, confidence or lack of confidence about a statement. So often I decide to leave them in. They can signal relations between multiple interviewees, like deference or conversational leadership. Some speakers are impossible to 'de-um' as it's so woven into their speech.
- internet_points 1y ago
  (The article is satire. Particles are an ill-defined class, they may have "meaning" or change the meaning of something, like "up" in "look up!", or they may say something about the speaker's attitude towards the statement or they may be required syntactically e.g. when posing a question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_particle#Modern_meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_particle#Modern_me... )
BiteCode_dev 1y ago
Unrelated but somewhat funny: I read someone jokingly proposing we pronunciate "particles" and "molecules" like we do for greek nouns (think "hercules"). And now with these "articles", I'm going to do this in my head for one more day.
- Klaster_1 1y ago
  This is exactly what crossed my mind as I was reading the title. Learning greek makes you perceive so many thing in different light!
YeGoblynQueenne 1y ago
>> 4. Hildegarde swallowed, yeah, an entire disk drive. Well now I must know.
sramsay 1y ago
When translating ancient Greek in class, one often slips into a weird translation-ese that would be pretty funny if you didn't know what was going on. You end up saying things like: "The going-into-the-temple men were on the one hand brave and on the other hand afraid."
wduquette 1y ago
Well, I'm glad I read these comments rather than trumpeting my new found knowledge of Greek particles to all and sundry. You have my thanks.

60 points by veqq 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

ggm 1y ago

A.k.A hesitation markers, non-lexical vocables, disfluence or nonfluence, filler.. It's entertaining how many different labels uh, well kinda um.. names I guess, er, anyway how many er ways to say these thingamabobs there, er, well are. Wikipedia posits that even neanderthals might have said Ummm.

readthenotes1 1y ago
Don't keep us hanging, what might the Neanderthals have said?
veqq 1y ago
> A.k.A hesitation markers, non-lexical vocables, disfluence or nonfluence, filler It's satirical.

MartinGAugustin 1y ago

[dead]

verisimi 1y ago

Strange article. Pretty sure the ancient greek translation is wrong in part too. They say: 'theōrhiā' means 'review', whereas it is obvious to me that it means 'theory'.

arnsholt 1y ago
The Speculative Granmarian is the premier journal of satirical linguistics, so that’s probably intentional. =)
baruz 1y ago
I assume you’re joking, but θεωρίᾱ does mean a “looking at” or “a beholding” or “contemplation” from the verb θεωρέω, “to look at” or “observe.” Aristotle liked to use it for speculation or “theorizing” in the mental sense, but apparently that was due to Pythagoras’s influence. Checked my Bolchazy-Carducci reprint of Crosby and Schaeffer, and they do indeed immediately gloss θεωρίᾱ as “review.”
- stavros 1y ago
  Yes, "I want to propose a theory" literally means "I want to propose a way of looking at things", or "I want to propose a viewpoint".

Peteragain 1y ago

Apparently Tai uses quite a bit of infix (not prefixes, or suffixes, but infixes). In in English we have infixes, but they are all expletives of the Nixon style: "Kings-bloody-cross" (a railway station in Sydney), "absa-f..king-luteley" ...

decimalenough 1y ago
Semitic languages like Arabic & Hebrew have triconsonantal roots where the vowels dance around them to change meaning. k-t-b "to write" becomes kataba "he wrote", katib "writer", maktab "office", maktaba "library", istaktaba "had a copy made" etc etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_root https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_root

sapphicsnail 1y ago

I really wish English had something like Greek ge, which is something like a sarcasm/snark marker. Socrates uses it a lot.

arnsholt 1y ago
Oh, but English does have a sarcasm marker! It's just not a word, instead it's typically marked by using non-standard pronunciation like creaky voice or lengthening vowels. The problem is of course that this stuff doesn't have an orthography, thus the use of stuff like /s online.
kgeist 1y ago
Is it really a sarcasm marker? I've always thought it's equivalent to že in Slavic languages (both probably from the same PIE *g(h)e), and in those languages, it can be used sarcastically, but its main meaning is 'in fact', 'as for X'. For example in Russian: on že glup = 'he is, in fact, a fool' or 'as for him, he's a fool - didn't you know?' Similarly, dictionaries translate the Greek ge as 'in fact, indeed.' If you mentally replace most instances of Ancient Greek ge with the Slavic že in Greek texts, it all starts making a lot of sense (if you're a speaker of a Slavic language). P.S. There's also a limiting sense in the dictionary, with the example given: Greek: ho de ge (+ participle) Russian: tot že (kto) English: but the one (who)

baruz 1y ago

Lest anyone take this article at face value, please note that it was published in _Speculative Grammarian_, “the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics.” The range of meanings for the Greek entautha, gar, and de are all well-understood.

arnsholt 1y ago
Classical Greek is well outside my field, but one of the things I love about SpecGram when it deals with things I do know, the jokes also have a kernel of truth to them. And in other classical languages I'm more familiar with, there is (IMO) an argument to be made that the texts should be translated more "orally" than they frequently are. There are probably many reasons for this, but I think one of them is that because they are Classical and Important there's a sense of reverence that makes us want to translate them Seriously(tm). Of course you're entirely right that Greek particles are not some unfathomable mystery. The systematic study of Greek language goes back literal millenia, and the particles are well understood (unlike say Vedic Sanskrit particles).
- dash2 1y ago
  So what trend in modern linguistics is this guy satirizing? Do they like to pretend that well-known things like entautha and oun are mysteries?
  - baruz 1y ago
    Not modern. Outsiders coming into the language (even for modern Greeks—the diglossia TFA mentions between spoken and written language in English existed for 1500+ years in Greek) find particles difficult to grasp, and the dictionary definitions do not really convey all the senses that the particles mean, like mathematics teaches from natural definitions of numbers progressing to Dedekind cuts. You know _Portuguese irregular verbs_, by Alexander McCall Smith, the comic novel where Dr. Professor von Igelfeld rests his reputation on a magisterial volume on the (strangely enough) Portuguese irregular verbs? Denniston’s _The Greek particles_ ultimately spans almost 700 pages after posthumous revisions (1960?). Page after page on individual particles. I think TFA satirizes that drive to squeeze every bit of meaning from the particles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewar_Denniston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewar_Denniston

nonrandomstring 1y ago

Editing audio interviews for podcast I sometimes remove lots of "particles" as the author calls them (I just call them "ums and ahs"), TFA poses a question. Do particles have "meaning"? Don't think I ever heard a discussion of that in any linguistics class, but they do have an effect. Working in radio/podcast you get quite a deep feel for speech as more than just words. I've heard there are effective "de-um" plugins, but I prefer to work with them by hand because they create non-verbal signals, mood, excitement, confidence or lack of confidence about a statement. So often I decide to leave them in. They can signal relations between multiple interviewees, like deference or conversational leadership. Some speakers are impossible to 'de-um' as it's so woven into their speech.

internet_points 1y ago
(The article is satire. Particles are an ill-defined class, they may have "meaning" or change the meaning of something, like "up" in "look up!", or they may say something about the speaker's attitude towards the statement or they may be required syntactically e.g. when posing a question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_particle#Modern_meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_particle#Modern_me... )

BiteCode_dev 1y ago

Unrelated but somewhat funny: I read someone jokingly proposing we pronunciate "particles" and "molecules" like we do for greek nouns (think "hercules"). And now with these "articles", I'm going to do this in my head for one more day.

Klaster_1 1y ago
This is exactly what crossed my mind as I was reading the title. Learning greek makes you perceive so many thing in different light!

YeGoblynQueenne 1y ago

>> 4. Hildegarde swallowed, yeah, an entire disk drive. Well now I must know.

sramsay 1y ago

When translating ancient Greek in class, one often slips into a weird translation-ese that would be pretty funny if you didn't know what was going on. You end up saying things like: "The going-into-the-temple men were on the one hand brave and on the other hand afraid."

wduquette 1y ago

Well, I'm glad I read these comments rather than trumpeting my new found knowledge of Greek particles to all and sundry. You have my thanks.