Tuesday 20 May 2014

Greek

I have occasionally mentioned Latin classes in these posts. Our Latin tutor has just introduced us to Greek. However, although we are Latin improvers, we are all Greek beginners, starting with alpha, beta, gamma.

Several Greek words can be transliterated directly into English, e.g., iota, delta, epsilon and alpha spell "idea." Another example is "Midas." Chi, Rho, Iota, Omicron, Tau, Omicron, Sigma is "Christos" which became "Christus" in Latin, then "Christ" in English.

Our tutor knows a Greek Orthodox priest so will ask him my question: do contemporary Greek Orthodox congregations hear and understand the New Testament read in the original or do they need it translated into modern Greek just as we have it translated into English?

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series informs us that the Phoenicians invented the alphabet. Google also informs me that the Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician one. English uses Roman letters. Thus, in moving from Latin to Greek, we have moved one stage further back towards the origin.

I envy Anderson's Time Patrolmen and Terran Intelligence Officers their ability to learn languages electronically. Flandry learns Eriau, which is not an earlier human language but an entirely unrelated one. He also learns how to translate Eriau duodecimal numbers into Arabic decimal numbers. By engaging with ancient human languages, I gain some degree of insight into Flandry's ability to think in both Anglic and Eriau, although one major difference is that, in that case, the languages and their alphabets are completely unconnected.

5 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

The last paragraph of this piece of yours interested me. It reminded me of this passage from Chapter XI of THE REBELE WORLDS, as Dominic Flandry was learning the language of the strange tripartite beings of the planet Dido: "Flandry's progress in his lessons amazed her. Besides having suitable genes, he had been through the Intelligence Corps' unmercifully rigorous courses in linguistics and metalinguistics, semantics and metasemantics, every known trick of concentration and memorizing; he had learned how to learn. Few civilian scientists received that good a training; they didn't need it as urgently as any field agent always did."

I would not be surprised if actual intelligence services, such as the CIA or MI5 had very similar linguistic courses. The practical advantages in having field agents learn foreign languages as quickly and thoroughly as possible are obvious. Esp., getting back to the Terran Naval Intelligence Corps, when an agent might not always be able to obtain a quick electronic cramming in another language.

Of course I'm familiar with our Indian/Arabic numbers system, but I wonder what a duodecimal system would be like?

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
It would be easy to make Arabic numerals duodecimal by simply adopting or adapting two new symbols. Thus, 10 becomes t, 11 becomes e, 12 becomes 10 etc. But what alien numerals, whether decimal or duodecimal, would look like is another matter. I am scouring the texts to check how many fingers Merseians have.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

I'm reminded of suggestions from people interested in SETI, that one means of opening communications with an alien race would be by means of mathematics, starting with using various combinations of dots and dashes to represent numbers, etc. And, of course, the Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps would teach its agents the number systems used by the major known star faring powers: Merseia, Betelgeuse, Ythri, etc.

I recall Anderson describing, in many of the non human races he invented, how many fingers the non humans in his stories had. But, I don't recall him mentioning how many fingers Merseians have!

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
I think I have read it recently: five or six. The latter would explain duodecimal numerals.
Paul.

Jim Baerg said...

Actually computer experts often use hexadecimal numbers, since a group of 4 on/off switches has 16 possible states.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
then sixteen is 10
duodecimal would be
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B

English has the beginnings of duodecimal number names, with dozen for a group of 12 & gross for dozen squared or 144 in base 10.
So BBB would be eleven gross, eleven dozen & eleven.
Add 1 & we need a name for dozen cubed.