Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 April 11

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April 11

Aramaic Translation Request

Hello. My question is, what is the Aramaic translation of "King of kings, Lord of lords," the title used in reference to Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation? Please spell the Aramaic words with the actual Hebrew letters if possible, or at least with the English transliteration of the names of each of the Hebrew letters which spell the Aramaic translation of "King of kings, Lord of lords." Also please tell me which Aramaic weord means (corresponds to) which English term (e.g., which Aramaic term means "king," and which Aramaic term means "of," and which Aramaic term means "kings," etc.) Thank you for any assistance you can provide. Gen. Ursus (talk) 00:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

For the first part of the title, see the fourth paragraph of the lead in King of Kings: "The title is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, as מלך מלכיא". (Note that the passage quoted is from the Aramaic portion of the book of Daniel.)

As for the second part, I'm not really sure which Aramaic term would be translated as "lord" (though I'm no expert in Aramaic).

הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) (formerly R——bo) 00:45, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Revelation 19:16 Aramaic NT: Peshitta

ܘܐܝܬ ܠܗ ܥܠ ܡܐܢܘܗܝ ܥܠ ܥܛܡܬܗ ܫܡܐ ܟܬܝܒܐ ܡܠܟܐ ܕܡܠܟܐ ܘܡܪܐ ܕܡܪܘܬܐ according to [1] if anyone can determine which of the words are King and Lord. I don't know if that is modern or ancient Aramaic either. Rmhermen (talk) 01:48, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Warning: I know very little of Aramaic, I only offer this for your consideration. There are at least three editions you can go to to find an Aramaic translation of Revelation: the Syriac Harklean from the early Medieval era, the John Gwynn Syriac reconstruction published in the UBS Peshitta from 1905, and the Assyrian Modern edition from 1997.

For King of kings, Lord of lords, the UBS Peshitta has:

ܡܠܟܐ ܕܡܠܟܐ ܘܡܪܐ ܕܡܪܘܬܐ

ܡܠܟܐ is for king

ܕܡܠܟܐ is for of kings

ܘܡܪܐ is for lord ܡܪܐ is for lord; ܘ is a conjunction

ܕܡܪܘܬܐ is for of lords

The particle ܕ is indicating the genitive use, or the English "of".

As you can see, the plural and singular for king are indistinct in text here, but the singular and plural for lord here use different words entirely (although based on the same root). I don't know why this is. Note the standard dictionary definition of "dominion" for ܡܪܘܬܐ. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 02:54, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Since Syriac, like Hebrew and Arabic, generally doesn't indicate short vowels, it may only be the consonants that are the same in the singular and plural of king. For example, in Standard Arabic, "king" is malik and "kings" is mulūk; since the plural has a long vowel in the second syllable they are spelled differently. But if Syriac has something like malikh in the singular and mulukh with a short vowel in the plural (which is plausible, but since I don't know Syriac I'm just guessing), then they'd be spelled the same. Angr (talk) 17:07, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that Aramaic had broken plurals in the Arabic sense. Biblical Aramaic seems to have had remnants of CVCC/CVCaC stem alternations in the "segholate" nouns, but somewhat obscured by historical sound changes, and the plural forms always having explicit plural endings. Here are the forms of the word in Biblical Aramaic: AnonMoos (talk) 03:34, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

"King"	Singular	Plural
absolute state	מלך	מלכין
construct state	מלך	מלכי
emphatic state (definite)	מלכא	מלכיא

Which would indicate that ܕܡܠܟܐ "dmlkʼ" is literally "of the king" rather than "of kings", and suggest that ܕܡܪܘܬܐ dmrwtʼ "of the lords" might be a plural of ܘܡܪܐ wmrʼ "the lord" formed with a suffix parallel to the Hebrew plural suffix -ות -ot. --ColinFine (talk) 09:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Note I modified to make clear that the waw connected to mr' was a conjunction.--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 17:13, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Doh. I should have noticed that. Modified my comment accordingly. --ColinFine (talk) 23:05, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Aspirated plosive / voiceless fricative pairs

After taking the info from other sources, I have been somewhat suspicious about the consonant chart at Adûnaic, since Tolkien tends to spell both [kʰ] and [x] (similarly for the other analogous pairs [tʰ]/[θ] and [pʰ]/[f]) as kh, so it is not very likely that the language has both. How many languages have both members of such a pair? Double sharp (talk) 11:52, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Many (if not most) languages of the Caucasus have both.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:23, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Georgian and Chechen differentiate [kʰ], [x] and [kʼ] phonemically, but not the others. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 12:53, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

It's a matter of the spelling convention. What's written as к in the Caucasic Cyrillic alphabets is in fact [kʰ], while кӀ is [kʼ]. In Abkhazian quite the contrary from its neighbors [kʰ] is spelled with "Ka with descender" қ, and [kʼ] is simple к.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:56, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Where did you take the chart from? Following the links in the article, [2] does not discuss phonology explicitly, but the comment in the wordlist section suggests that there were [θ] and [t͡θ], but no [tʰ].—Emil J. 13:22, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

The quasi-Khuzdul site at Khuzdul has [tʰ] but not the other two, and I only realised something was not quite right just before I asked this question... Double sharp (talk) 15:09, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Scottish Gaelic distinguishes /pʰ/~/f/ and /kʰ/~/x/; Icelandic distinguishes /pʰ/~/f/ and /tʰ/~/θ/; Navajo distinguishes /tɬʰ/~/ɬ/, /tsʰ/~/s/, /tʃʰ/~/ʃ/, and /kʰ/~/x/, though only the last pair counts if you're not considering affricates; Standard Chinese distinguishes /pʰ/~/f/, /tsʰ/~/s/, /ʈʂʰ/~/ʂ/, /tɕʰ/~/ɕ/, and /kʰ/~/x/, though again if you're not considering affricates only the first and last pair count. I don't think distinctions like these are particularly rare. Angr (talk) 17:00, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

My question was not based on me thinking this distinction was rare, it was me noticing inconsistent descriptions of a conlang and then wondering how many languages had this distinction. Thank you very much for the answers. Double sharp (talk) 14:43, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

To add some more major languages, English has it (at least word-initially) between /pʰ f/ /tʰ θ/ and Scots adds /kʰ x/, German, Israeli Hebrew and Armenian have /pʰ f/ and /kʰ x/, Modern Standard Arabic has /tʰ θ/ and /kʰ x/, and Turkish has /pʰ f/ (though those with /x/ are often [x~χ], which maybe you're not counting). It's common in the Northwest Coast, e.g. Tlingit with /kʰ x/ /kʰʷ xʷ/ /qʰ χ/ /qʰʷ χʷ/, and in southern Africa, e.g. Xhosa /pʰ f/ /kʰ x/. And many of these have aspirated affricate/fricative pairs as well, if you are counting those. Lsfreak (talk) 17:47, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I deliberately excluded languages like English and German where the aspiration is not phonemic. Depending on your theory of how phonemes work, English doesn't contrast /tʰ/ and /θ/ but only /t/ (which may be realized as [tʰ]) and /θ/. But in some of your other examples (Armenian, Tlingit, Xhosa) aspiration is definitely phonemic. As I said, I don't think contrasts between voiceless fricatives and voiceless aspirated stops are particularly rare. Angr (talk) 19:53, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Pronunciation of ‘medieval’

There was a time in my life when the only pronunciation one ever encountered was the 4-syllable one that was like "meddy evil". But somehow, sometime, that’s all changed, and what I hear more often than not these days, including from highly educated people, is a 3-syllable thing: mə-dee-vəl. Wiktionary confirms I'm not just hearing things.

Does anyone know when this change occurred, and why? My guess is that it proceeded from people no longer being taught Latin and Greek roots in school, and not recognising 'medi-' as something requiring its full value, thus failing to pronounce it separately from '–eval', and treating the –ie- like the same letters in 'thief' or 'grief'. (Talk about the eval that men do.) But I may be way off here.

Does anyone (anyone who's ever heard of the word, that is) pronounce 'coeval' like "co-vəl" or does it get the full treatment, co-eval? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:58, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I find it barbaric not to spell the word mediaeval and pronounce it that way. μηδείς (talk) 22:06, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

The University of Toronto has a Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and a Centre for Medieval Studies, but people say "meddy-evil" and "mid-evil", no matter the spelling. I guess it guess depends on age, background...like maybe the older British professors would say "meddy-evil"? I don't know, I never really noticed. Personally, I say "mid-evil". Oh, and I have only ever heard people say "co-evil" for "coeval". And hey, it's a rare time on the Reference Desk when you can trust my expert opinion :) Adam Bishop (talk) 22:32, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I say it, mid-evil, but often read it as me-di-ee-val (go figure). Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:52, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely. I generally go for "Muhd-yeval", but when I'm in a hurry it's "Md'evl" every time. This might be a BrEng thing, with influence from Baldrick off Time Team. - Cucumber Mike (talk)

Mid-evil is the pronunciation I learned watching She-Ra and My Little Pony. I adopted the spelling pronunciation meddy-eyevul when I started studying French and realized knowing how to pronounce the French and Latin words borrowed into English would mean never forgetting how to spell them in English. μηδείς (talk) 23:21, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Pronouncing it 'mid-eeval' is 'blud-eeval' :) UK res here, always pronounces it 'meddy-eval' (and spells it with the 'a'). 'Med-eeval' sounds American to me - and I have heard it many times from Americans. I cannot remember hearing that pronunciation from a Br.Eng speaker. I would go with the theory that the change may have been caused by the spelling, considering the Brits spell it as '-iae-' and that combination of vowels does not look like it would be pronounced '-ee-'. However, due to the advent of Hollywood and YouTube etc., from across the water, we are getting people (mostly younger people) adopting certain pronunciations from there, regardless of spelling. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 08:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I was unaware of this phenomenon until I read about it in this discussion, and it gives me an incentive to reinforce my efforts to maintain four syllables in the pronunciation of the word, as well as six in "extraordinary", three in "interest", three in "diaper", four in "literature", four in "temperature", six in "veterinarian", four in "vegetable", four in "comfortable", four in "temporary", and four in "et cetera".

—Wavelength (talk) 17:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

'Diaper' only ever has two syllables, and we pronounce it 'nappy' and spell it that way. 'Diaper' is something we think of from American YouTube videos (showing us just how much our civilisation is in decline). Similarly, 'pacifier' sounds like a tazer or some other weapon to control crowds, and not a device to make a baby happy. I am waiting for the day when Americans call a 'bib' as 'collateral'. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:48, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

See Spelling pronunciation. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 18:56, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, also, the "mid-evil" pronunciation is the result of a deletion one of a pair of repeating syllables (med-ee-ee-val), a common linguistic phaenomenon which is known as haplogy. μηδείς (talk) 19:23, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh, right. So, why is this selective? Why don't people say "inchoate" with 2 syllables to rhyme with "float", and "coeval" with 2 syllables to rhyme with "oval"? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 20:55, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean to reflect haplology? The deletion occurs usually with two identical or almost identical syllables or vowels. Meddy-evil has two long ee's. Inchoate has a long oh followed by a long ay. Much more typical when not identical is a schwa near a mid vowel, like probably > probly, with an pr-/ab-əb/-ly sequence in it. μηδείς (talk) 21:10, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the latter. I have no idea what your opening question means; can you rephrase it? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 21:23, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I meant, did you give the examples (inchoate, etc.) to ask why they didn't undergo haplology. Obviously the rest of my comment was the answer to that. μηδείς (talk) 21:47, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Yep. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 01:51, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

1,250,000 google hits for medevial — they can't be all typos. Djbcjk (talk) 07:15, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Highly doubt it. I got only 110,000 hits when I searched for "medevial" in quotes, and I doubt that number too. Google hits does not equal number number of pages on which the word is found. It's just a magic number that nobody knows what it means, including anyone at Google. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 07:25, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Still, some of those 110,000 hits must represent a third pronunciation, i.e. me-de-vi-al Djbcjk (talk) 07:59, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps. Although how many is anybody's guess. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 08:07, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

There are allegedly ten times that many hits for mischevious - and yes, every last one of them is a mistake. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 08:00, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah, Jack, you know many people say mischevious and think it's the correct form of the word. So they spell it that way on websites, just as, no doubt, some of those who say medevial. Djbcjk (talk) 08:39, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I know, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a mistake. The road to Spellers' Hell is paved with good intentions. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 10:32, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

The °mistakes° always win in the long run. We'll come back in 200 years and people will be speaking the most god-awful solecisms. And in the dictionaries — mischevious (adj.) (also mischievous (arch.)) Djbcjk (talk) 11:01, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Around the same time that the dictionaries say "nucular (also 'nuclear')". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:22, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Your probly rite. Einstein was on to something with this relativity thing (2 wrongs never make a right, but 20 million wrongs is a different ball game). Spelling also seems to have quantum states. A spelling like "mischevious" is and will continue to be classed as wrong, for as long as it takes for a critical mass to develop, at which point it will suddenly jump from "wrong" to "right", with no intermediate state. In the meantime, which is where we all live and operate, it's wrong. People are just so damn impatient; can't they accept that it's not yet right, and continue to use the accepted spelling? Their time will come. Maybe not in their lifetime, but they've got plenty more where that one came from. I just don't know anymore. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 13:04, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Merimam-Webster gives 4 pronunciations and notes that while the word is first found in the 14th century, the alternate spelling dates to the 16th. [3] Rmhermen (talk) 21:33, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

My copy of the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary lists the four-syllable pronunciation as primary, with the three-syllable one as a variant, for both Received Pronunciation and General American. It does not list the two-syllable pronunciation as valid for "coeval". Gabbe (talk) 07:08, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Which pron of coeval is listed? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 08:13, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

It lists /kəʊ ˈiːv ^əl/ as primary, with /koʊ ˈiːv ^əl/ as a variant. Gabbe (talk) 11:04, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but aren't they both two-syllable pronunciations? -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 02:43, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, if they are pronounced as two syllables it is because the vowel just before the "l" has been omitted (like how some people say "middle" [midl] or "total" [totl]). The raised "ə" here indicates that it is sometimes left out. In that case the word would sound something like "co-evl". None of the pronunciations listed would make the word rhyme with "oval". Both of them sound more like "co-" + "evil", with the stress on the "e". Gabbe (talk) 07:40, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The following online dictionaries have sound files: m-w, oald, oaad, cald. Gabbe (talk) 07:52, 17 April 2013 (UTC)