Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 March 14

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March 14

Do Eastern Orthodox priests learn Greek?

My understanding is that Roman Catholics priests learn a fair bit of Latin (more than the average person anyway). Do Eastern Orthodox priests correspondingly learn a lot of Greek? This seems a straightforward assumption but I can't actually google any evidence to prove it. Dr-ziego (talk) 01:36, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

I can't provide an overall picture, but in some cases, certainly yes. This programme, for instance, emphasises Greek (and to a certain extent Armenian). Henry^Flower 08:04, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

In other cases they certainly do not, such as in the Macedonian Orthodoxy when viewed through the lens of the historical relations between Macedonia and Greece. Macedonians do not learn to speak Greek except in very rare circumstances. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.131.40.58 (talk) 11:28, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

{citation needed} Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:31, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

First hand personal experience beats any citation surely? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.131.40.58 (talk) 17:33, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

No, on Wikipedia, it doesn't, actually. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:17, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

No. Is the first hand personal experience a WP:RS reliable source, or a biased opinion, or a lie by a mischief maker? This concept of reliable source is fundamental to how Wikipedia operates. I suggest you study that link. Akld guy (talk) 20:20, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

The OP could start his own site: 811314058pedia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

The OP needs to be clear about the contexts in which Greek might be studied. As the language of the New Testament and of the early church Fathers it is usually part of the theological training of all clergy, of whichever christian denomination. However, as a liturgical language it does not have the same status in the Orthodox communion as Latin has in the Roman Catholic church. While Latin was the sole language of liturgy and administration in Catholicism until quite recently, the Orthodox churches always permitted the use of vernacular languages (sometimes in rather archaic forms, like Old Church Slavonic). An Orthodox priest in a non-Greek speaking country might well learn Greek in order to study the biblical text (as might a Catholic priest), but would not have any strong need of the language for either liturgy or church administration. Wymspen (talk) 15:52, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• A priest in Russian Orthodox Church is not required to know Greek, what he is required is to know Church Slavonic, the main liturgical language of the Church. All the holy and liturgical books are in Church Slavonic. Divine services in Greek occur on very rare occasions, never mandatory ones. There were times when even heads of the Church didn't know any Greek. Today some seminaries provide courses of Ancient Greek (and their number is growing). But they sometimes have Latin, Hebrew and some modern languages too, especially those seminaries and academies which provide master's and postgraduate degrees. Other non-Greek Orthodox Churches use their national languages, so they don't need Greek either. Шурбур (talk) 09:25, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

A survival of Greek language in Western liturgy is Kyrie Eleison. Alansplodge (talk) 20:00, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Persian diacritic

What is the name of the diacritic in Rubaʿi (see actual article title)? How does one figure out this stuff? I read through Diacritic but couldn't find it there.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:27, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

@Shantavira: According to the page, pointed to by the redirect ʿ, it is Modifier letter left half ring. --CiaPan (talk) 11:20, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. Thank you. Evidently I should have thought to paste that character into the search box.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:44, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

It's not really a diacritic; it's a transcription of a letter of the Arabic alphabet. In Arabic, this letter represents a pharyngeal consonant sound which doesn't occur in the Persian language, though the letter is used in written Persian... AnonMoos (talk) 17:59, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

In Persian that letter is pronounced as a glottal stop and is used only in Arabic loanwords. --Theurgist (talk) 00:08, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

"Student of junk" in Japanese like "gomi no sensei" means "master of junk"?

If "gomi no sensei" translates from Japanese to "master of junk", what might be options to say "student of junk", like someone who might one day aspire to become a gomi sensei? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.210.94.23 (talk) 14:34, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

The question seems to have as a premise the idiomaticness of gomi no sensei. I've no reason to believe that it's idiomatic. My own L2 Japanese intuition is near worthless, but neither a native informant I've just asked nor Google suggests that it's normal Japanese. Gomi can mean rubbish, no is the genitive case particle, and sensei can mean master; so gomi no sensei, if it appeared, could be parsed as "master of junk". But where did you get it from? (Was it perhaps constructed by somebody with Japanese as a second language?) -- Hoary (talk) 22:51, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

It's from a book by William Gibson. I know it is not an idiom. 85.210.94.23 (talk) 00:28, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

So it's perhaps less Japanese than Japanese-influenced Gibsonese. Well, "student" is normally seito (up to secondary), gakusei (undergraduate at university, or most other tertiary education, e.g. vocational schools), or insei (postgraduate). You could replace sensei with one of these; certainly the result would be entirely grammatical. Sorry, if this is a matter of an artistic or quasi-religious study, I'm ignorant of the terminology. Maybe somebody else will pipe up. -- Hoary (talk) 00:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks very much. Are these kanji ゴミの学生 an accurate representation of gomi no gakusei? I got them off Google translate. 85.210.94.23 (talk) 13:12, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Gomi is in katakana (not kanji at all)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:03, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

I see. Thanks. Is that because there's no kanji for gomi? The katakana and kanji above are what Google translate gave me. 79.69.203.233 (talk) 13:33, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

. . . and no is in hiragana, not kanji. Gomi is in katakana because it's conventionally in katakana. (It's also seen in hiragana, ごみ.) There's at least one kanji for gomi: 塵. However, this is very unusual and, I'd guess, little understood. So, is ゴミの学生 the normal way to write gomi no gakusei? Yes it is. -- Hoary (talk) 13:46, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

85.210.94.23 -- there are several questions to the effect of "What is the opposite word of Sensei?" on Quora ([1], [2], [3]), and from browsing the top-rated answers, it doesn't seem like there's any one-word term which serves that purpose in any simple way... AnonMoos (talk) 03:53, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

One of the first things I read there is "Some will be at the level of sempai, meaning senior students who are at least partially responsible for the training and discipline of a younger student or group of students. Others will be kohai, beginners." Uh, no. Sempai (senpai) are people (employees, students) who are senior to the person being talked about (often oneself); kōhai (not "kohai") are people (ditto) who are junior to ditto. (And students at the same level are dōkyūsei.) So you shouldn't rush to believe what you see in Quora. OTOH I don't know how Japanese terms may have been adapted/mangled for mostly-English-language enterprises that use quasi-Japanese-language trappings. -- Hoary (talk) 04:23, 15 March 2019 (UTC)