Day: August 14, 2016

Who wrote that Iōannēs is a new name? And new in what context?

I refer you to Wikipedia: John (given name)

The name John is a theophoric name originating from the Hebrew name יוֹחָנָן (Yôḥānān), or in its longer form יְהוֹחָנָן (Yəhôḥānān), meaning “YHWH has been gracious”. Several obscure figures in the Old Testament bore this name, and it grew in popularity once borne by the high priest Johanan (fl. 407 BC) and especially by king John Hyrcanus (d. 104 BC). In the second temple period, it was the fifth most popular male name among Jews in Judaea and was borne by several important rabbis, such as Yochanan ben Zakai and Yochanan ben Nuri.

The name John in its Greek form Ἰωάννης (Iōannēs) features prominently in the New Testament, being borne by John the Baptist, John the Apostle, and several others; the Gospel of John, three epistles, and Revelation are each attributed to a “John”. As a result, the name became immensely popular in Christian societies.

Thank you OED:

four < *fowr < Middle English fower < feower < Old English feower

forty since 15th century; fourty Middle English up to 17th century < Middle English fourti (and, in parentheses, forti) < feouwerti < Old English feowertig .So the forti spelling was apparently occasional in Middle English, but not regular.

This took some hunting, and OED wasn’t as much help as I’d hoped. I ended up going to Jespersen A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, §4.69

The regular development was fowər > fowr > foːr > fɔːr.

Jespersen notes, though, that vowels are shortened a lot of the time when they are in the first part of a compound, or preceding a consonant cluster. That’s why five goes to fifty with a short vowel—already in the Ormulum (12th century). You can see that with an original long o in nose > nostril, holy > holiday. You can also see that with an original diphthong ow: know > knowledge, Gloucester /glowsester > gl ɔstə/, rowlock [rɔlək], and, Jespersen says, forty from four.

Now, not so fast. The spelling tells Jespersen that fowərti went to fɔrti with a short o, just like know went to knowledge with a short o. But I pronounce the vowels in four and forty the same, long. What’s happened?

One of the following three things, and possibly all three:

• forty is spelled according to the original Early Modern English pronunciation, and used to be pronounced /fɔrti/ accordingly. It is pronounced /fɔːɹti/ now by analogy with four.
• forty is pronounced /fɔːɹti/ in my dialect, because that’s what r’s do; so my dialect has gotten rid of any distinction between [fɔːɹti] and [fɔɹti]. Americans?
• EDIT: I read English-language vowel changes before historic /r/ the hoarse/horse merger correctly, mourning and morning are pronounced differently in South Carolina, Alabama, and in Scots. If there is a historical survival of short o forty, it will be found in those dialects.
• Likeliest: fourty (with a long vowel) and forty (with a short vowel) were both around in Early Modern English as different pronunciations—as the Mediaeval spelling forti hints at. The short vowel version was acting like fifty, in shortening the ow before the –ty. The long vowel version kept the historical form, whether because of analogy with four, or because the diphthong in fowrty was a late development.

The fourty spelling dies out quickly in the 1600s, and I am convinced by the guess in Why is ‘forty’ spelled without a ‘u’ in Canadian/British English? : the King James Bible happened to choose forty instead of fourty, at a time of orthographic whimsy and/or phonetic instability. And that was that.

What I think is less likely is that four and fourty were pronounced identically in Early Middle English, and the King James switched spelling to forty just because. Things like that do happen, English being English; but because forti was a mediaeval spelling, I think there was an underlying pronunciation difference.

Obligatory disclaimer: this is all a guess.

The dirty not-so-secret of Attic Greek typography: it adopts the punctuation and capitalisation conventions of the European-language country it is printed in.

So names or adjectives of nationalities (Hellenic/hellenic, Hellene/hellene) will be capitalised based on where it is printed. The quotation marks will follow local practice (and there’s a special place in hell for whoever uses ‘ ’, which are so easy to confuse with breathing marks before capitals). Enthusiasm for exclamation points will depend on local practice, if not whim. (I remember being taken aback at a Dutch printing of the Iliad, chock a-block with “!”)

The one exception: proper names are always capitalised, because they are always capitalised in capitalising languages.

The semi exception: starts of sentences are often not capitalised, following mediaeval Latin practice. But you’ll see many editions where they are; and in Byzantine Greek, from memory, capitalised starts of sentences are normal.

So, do we need uppercase and lowercase in Attic? No. But then again, Attic at the time was quite happy with no space between words too. We use capitalisation in Attic Greek, because we treat it like the contemporary European languages we are used to.

Which raises the question: what would a country with a unicameral script do with Greek? How would India or Thailand or China print Greek?

… They’d learn Greek via some Western scholarly tradition or other, and they’d follow that particular Western tradition (or traditions). Sorry.

Agree with Patrick Alan Burke. I’ll add that the Lydian sounds more strange to Western ears because it not only changes a pitch in the exclusive Major and Minor modes of Common Practice: it changes one of the core pitches of the scale, IV♯, which is disorienting for Western ears.

(It makes me smug that Greek has a IV♭, and Arabic even has a VIII♭. Yes, you read that right.)

Add to that that the IV♯ is a Tritone, the “diabolus in musica”. It is an interval that Western music always found problematic, and the cultural associations have gone along with that.

Yes. Per Matt Santos on Wikipedia:

According to David Remnick’s biography of Barack Obama, “The Bridge,” and other news sources, West Wing writer and producer Eli Attie used then-State Senator Obama as a model for the character.

• Smith, Ben (5 April 2010). “Imagining Obama On ‘The West Wing‘”. Politico.
• Stelter, Brian (29 October 2008). “Following The Script: Obama, McCain and ‘The West Wing‘”. New York Times.
• Freedland, Jonathan (2008-02-21). “From West Wing to the real thing: Scriptwriters modeled TV’s ethnic minority candidate on young Barack Obama“. The Guardian.

No. No no no.

The Hebrew word ’erabon “pledge” (Strong 6162. עֲרָבוֹן (erabon)) shows up in Greek as arrabōn. In fact, it doesn’t quite: the word was borrowed in Classical times, so it was likely taken from Phoenecian instead.

Within Greek, arrabōn ended up meaning “engagement, betrothal”, because a betrothal is a kind of pledge. But that change is no earlier than Athanasius of Alexandria (according to Lampe), which makes it 700 years after the word is first attested in Greek. And it has nothing to do with Hebrew. Therefore, עֲרָבוֹן cannot be translated as “fiancailles”.

Let’s collate these responses against Tripoli (disambiguation) from Wikipedia:

• Tripoli, Libya
• Tripoli, Lebanon, the second largest city in Lebanon
• Tripoli, Greece, the capital of Arcadia, Greece
• Tripolis (Larisaia), an ancient city
• Tripolis ad Maeandrum, an ancient city on the borders of Lydia, Caria and Phrygia
• Tripolis (Pontus), an ancient city
• Tripoli, Iowa, a city in Bremer County, Iowa, United States
• Tripoli, Wisconsin, an unincorporated community, United States
• New Tripoli, Pennsylvania, a village in Pennsylvania, United States

Not mentioned by Wikipedia and mentioned by Pamela Dennett Grennes’ link to Geotargit:

• Tripoli, St Ann, Jamaica
• Tripoli, Atlantida, Honduras
• Tripoli, near Cortland, New York