אלי אלי למה עזבתני
September 14, 2015 8:48 PM Subscribe
How Aramaic gained - and lost - its status as the language of Middle East statecraft.
John McWhorter! Great writer, great linguist, and great guy.
The title is probably the most famous Aramaic saying in the West -- it's not Hebrew, despite being spelled in that alphabet. Nice choice.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:37 PM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
The title is probably the most famous Aramaic saying in the West -- it's not Hebrew, despite being spelled in that alphabet. Nice choice.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:37 PM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
The title is probably the most famous Aramaic saying in the West
Amen.
posted by Devonian at 3:11 AM on September 15, 2015
Amen.
posted by Devonian at 3:11 AM on September 15, 2015
it's not Hebrew, despite being spelled in that alphabet.
Hebrew and Aramaic have the same alphabet, but it would possibly be more correct to call this script Aramaic rather than Hebrew: tradition (supported by archaeological evidence) says that the Jews exiled to Babylon brought this "Assyrian" script with them on their return; it became the standard form, but the older Paleo-Hebrew form of script was preserved and used in some odd places - e.g., to mark Divine names in some of the Qumran documents, and on the coins issued by Bar Kochba.
Amen
It's the same word in Hebrew and Aramaic, incidentally. But is it an Aramaic word because it's a liturgical word taken from Hebrew scriptures, or because of parallel development? I suspect the former, but I have no idea.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:39 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Hebrew and Aramaic have the same alphabet, but it would possibly be more correct to call this script Aramaic rather than Hebrew: tradition (supported by archaeological evidence) says that the Jews exiled to Babylon brought this "Assyrian" script with them on their return; it became the standard form, but the older Paleo-Hebrew form of script was preserved and used in some odd places - e.g., to mark Divine names in some of the Qumran documents, and on the coins issued by Bar Kochba.
Amen
It's the same word in Hebrew and Aramaic, incidentally. But is it an Aramaic word because it's a liturgical word taken from Hebrew scriptures, or because of parallel development? I suspect the former, but I have no idea.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:39 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Rene Guenon had a take which I have not seen much of elsewhere. His argument is long but in brief (if that is even possible) it is that Christianity began as an initiatory esoteric order and was adapted for a state exoteric religion when the Roman religion collapsed into a complete farce; one of his arguments is that we have no written record of Jesus' sayings in Aramaic (save for the four words in the post title) even though it should have been trivial to write one.
posted by bukvich at 6:39 AM on September 15, 2015
posted by bukvich at 6:39 AM on September 15, 2015
I don't know whether amen is 'truly' or 'originally' Aramaic rather than Hebrew, or whether both evolved from a common ancestor. Just something I was told a long time ago by a priest. Which is, I guess, apt.
posted by Devonian at 7:21 AM on September 15, 2015
posted by Devonian at 7:21 AM on September 15, 2015
Russian, so complicated he wonders if it is an elaborate hoax-a good laugh.
Mandarin is the most commonly spoken language on Earth today. Unless the influence of China, or the Chinese economy, collapses catastrophically, I don't see why it won't continue as the largest language. With the ending of the one-child clause won't it grow, radically, in use?
It interesting how we aquire and shed language, entire ways of thought vanish. Glatu barrada nicto.
posted by Oyéah at 8:39 AM on September 15, 2015
Mandarin is the most commonly spoken language on Earth today. Unless the influence of China, or the Chinese economy, collapses catastrophically, I don't see why it won't continue as the largest language. With the ending of the one-child clause won't it grow, radically, in use?
It interesting how we aquire and shed language, entire ways of thought vanish. Glatu barrada nicto.
posted by Oyéah at 8:39 AM on September 15, 2015
אלי אלי למה עזבתני
Actually, this is Hebrew; what Jesus said was rather (something like) אלהי אלהי למא שבקתני, which is the Aramaic version of this verse from Psalm 22.
posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 11:44 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Actually, this is Hebrew; what Jesus said was rather (something like) אלהי אלהי למא שבקתני, which is the Aramaic version of this verse from Psalm 22.
posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 11:44 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ah, sorry if I messed that up.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:23 PM on September 15, 2015
posted by Chrysostom at 12:23 PM on September 15, 2015
For anyone who likes reading about this sort of thing, check out the excellent Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler. languagehat pointed me to it a while back.
posted by pravit at 5:08 PM on September 15, 2015
posted by pravit at 5:08 PM on September 15, 2015
Chinese is a language family, with vast differences between Cantonese, Mandarin, Uyghur etc, comparable to the differences between english and swedish today. Mandarin at most generous count has around 900,000,000 speakers but many varieties of mandarin are not mutually inteligible, making it less of a single language than spanish and portuguese are. With the extreme added difficulty of a non-alphabet writing system on top of the tonality, I think chinese is going to face more challenges in expanding against english as time passes, not less.
posted by sandswipe at 9:29 PM on September 15, 2015
posted by sandswipe at 9:29 PM on September 15, 2015
Now that I think about it, it's strange that the word is transcribed "sabachthani", representing a Greek form "σαβαχθανί". The Aramaic form it presumably comes from is spelled with a qoph (K), not a kaph (a fricative like the one in loCH lomond).
Also, the Taw (Taf) should be a hard one, and not be represented by a theta. Weird.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:11 PM on September 15, 2015
Also, the Taw (Taf) should be a hard one, and not be represented by a theta. Weird.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:11 PM on September 15, 2015
Mandarin is the most commonly spoken language on Earth today. Unless the influence of China, or the Chinese economy, collapses catastrophically, I don't see why it won't continue as the largest language
The Chinese writing system represents a very large hurdle to more widespread use as a lingua franca. Full literacy in Chinese-speaking societies, even highly educated societies like Singapore or Taiwan (or Japan, which is obviously not a Chinese-speaking society but faces analogous issues in its use of Chinese characters in its written language), takes years. Obviously people living their life in these societies encounter the language all the time and so those with education become literate, but the effort required shouldn't be underestimated.
I say this, by the way, as a "heritage speaker" of Chinese who is mostly literate after 10+ years of Chinese schooling in America. The success rate of Chinese schools in the US in producing fully literate heritage speakers, who presumably speak Chinese at home with immigrant parents, is not high in my experience and I can't imagine that the majority of non-Chinese speakers would find it any easier to learn it.
And a minor nitpick: Uyghur is not a Chinese language (in the linguistic sense, though it's obviously spoken in China); it's a Turkic language closely related to Uzbek. Incidentally, also, it's suggested over half of the world's languages are in fact tonal, though this doesn't say anything about the relative spread of speakers, of course. In some ways the Indo-European language family that has spread so widely over the world is unusual in its lack of tonality.
posted by andrewesque at 5:44 AM on September 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
The Chinese writing system represents a very large hurdle to more widespread use as a lingua franca. Full literacy in Chinese-speaking societies, even highly educated societies like Singapore or Taiwan (or Japan, which is obviously not a Chinese-speaking society but faces analogous issues in its use of Chinese characters in its written language), takes years. Obviously people living their life in these societies encounter the language all the time and so those with education become literate, but the effort required shouldn't be underestimated.
I say this, by the way, as a "heritage speaker" of Chinese who is mostly literate after 10+ years of Chinese schooling in America. The success rate of Chinese schools in the US in producing fully literate heritage speakers, who presumably speak Chinese at home with immigrant parents, is not high in my experience and I can't imagine that the majority of non-Chinese speakers would find it any easier to learn it.
And a minor nitpick: Uyghur is not a Chinese language (in the linguistic sense, though it's obviously spoken in China); it's a Turkic language closely related to Uzbek. Incidentally, also, it's suggested over half of the world's languages are in fact tonal, though this doesn't say anything about the relative spread of speakers, of course. In some ways the Indo-European language family that has spread so widely over the world is unusual in its lack of tonality.
posted by andrewesque at 5:44 AM on September 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also, the Taw (Taf) should be a hard one, and not be represented by a theta. Weird.
In the ancient pronunciation that preumably would have led to the original Greek transliteration of the Aramaic, theta was a hard T sound (phi was also a hard P sound).
posted by Copronymus at 9:07 AM on September 16, 2015
In the ancient pronunciation that preumably would have led to the original Greek transliteration of the Aramaic, theta was a hard T sound (phi was also a hard P sound).
posted by Copronymus at 9:07 AM on September 16, 2015
Taw is generally represented by theta in Greek transcriptions of Hebrew, and I assume of Aramaic. Presumably the Hebrew/Aramaic t was aspirated. Joe, you're right that qoph is usually written as kappa rather than chi, but kappa-theta is an impossible sequence in Greek -- you can't have an unaspirated stop next to an aspirated stop.
posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 12:23 PM on September 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 12:23 PM on September 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
And a minor nitpick: Uyghur is not a Chinese language (in the linguistic sense, though it's obviously spoken in China); it's a Turkic language closely related to Uzbek.
And to bring this groaningly back on-topic, Uyghur was once written in letters borrowed from Sogdian, which borrowed them from Aramaic. That's all I know about either of those languages, though.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:54 PM on September 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
And to bring this groaningly back on-topic, Uyghur was once written in letters borrowed from Sogdian, which borrowed them from Aramaic. That's all I know about either of those languages, though.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:54 PM on September 16, 2015 [1 favorite]
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Wasn't Akkadian also the preceding Semitic lingua franca? I was watching something earlier today that mentioned the Hittite Empire and their contemporary Egyptian state conducting diplomatic communication with each other in Akkadian.
posted by XMLicious at 10:37 PM on September 14, 2015