J-to-GLI

I recently noticed a pattern between Spanish and Italian. If a Spanish word contains a J following a vowel, it may have an Italian counterpart which has GLI instead. I've found only a few such couplets so far but still, a nice little tool.

paja > paglia, straw

mejor > meglio, better

conejo > coniglio, rabbit

bagaje >bagaglio, baggage

(x)y = ελληνική λέξη

This week it occurred to me that if the second letter in an English word is y, it's probably from Greek. Let's try it out:

Ay...no Greek words. Not an auspicious start, is it?
Byssinosis, (A)byss.
Cytoplasm, Cyst, Cynosure, Cynic, Cycle, Cyanide, Cypress.
Dynamo, Dysentery, Dyspepsia.
Ey...no Greek words.
F in Greek is phi Φ, which we'd write as ph, thus: Phylum, Physics, Phytoplankton.
G/J: Gyroscope, Gynecology.
Hymen, Hydrogen, Hysteria.
I...no English words beginning with "Iy"
K/Q: Kythera (Zither)
Lyre, Lycanthrope
Mystery, Myriad, Myrtle, Myrrh, Mycelium
Nymph; but not Nylon.
Oyster
Pyromania, Pylon, Pyramid.
Rhyme, Rhythm. Don't split hairs, you know the h is silent.
Synonym, Sycamore, Symbol
Tyrant, Tyro, Type, Typhus
U...no English words beginning with "Uy"
W and V...no Greek words.
Xylophone
Zymurgy, Zygote.

ελληνική λέξη = Greek word

Le Mot Juste 3

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

A couple of days ago I couldn't think of a word, you know how it is. I described it to my wife, she drew a blank too. I looked at a couple of online Thesauruses, no luck. After 30 minutes it popped into my head; it was something like enervating or disinterested. That sort of word.

Then at dinner tonight we were discussing the flu going around. A daughter was drawing a blank on the word she wanted. She was saying the flu "passes on, it's easy to get sick." Oh yeah- flu is contagious.

New topic: English isn't all that English anymore, not since the 11th century when Guillaume le Bâtard, William the Conqueror, became King of England, and brought all that Latinate Norman French with him. About 45% of modern English is French-sourced: words such as impartial, attorney, celestial, venison, verity and velocity; but not words such as fair, lawyer, heavenly, deer, truth, and speed. And yes, words such as disinterested and contagious are also French-Latin.

So I have a little two-part hypothesis:

1. When an Anglophone can't remember a word, it's most likely to be a Latinate word like velocity, not a West Germanic word like speed.

2. The Anglophone will try to describe that forgotten word using mostly West Germanic words.

Considering that almost nobody speaks English with any awareness of where any word might have come from a thousand or more years ago, isn't it remarkable that this fundamental split in the language still exists subconsciously after so long? Is it merely syllable count? I doubt it. This must get at some inherent difference in how Romance and Germanic languages work at the most primal level. And do German speakers therefore think differently than we do, not having a French-soaked vocabulary and grammar? And likewise the French- what do they miss from not having West Germanic nuts and bolts in their tongue? Does English confer benefits on the speaker's brain from being dual-sourced? And when Germans or Frenchmen forget words and try to describe them- are there any patterns to the words sometimes forgotten or always remembered?

As we say in English: I. Don't. Know. But I do wonder.

Tough Guys Don't Pitch Tents

not too shabby

About 30 years ago I read the Norman Mailer novel, Tough Guys Don't Dance. It's about a son, Tim Madden, who simply will never be as tough a guy as his father Dougy. Tim must be about 40, but still feels he's a wimpy disappointment to Dougy, now an old man. In one passage (IIRC), Tim recollects a scene from his childhood: Dougy is silently parked in front of the TV, Tim's mom stands in the doorway to the kitchen. Not complaining, but just making the observation, she says to Dougy, "You never tell me that you love me." Dougy doesn't miss a beat or take his eyes off the TV: "I'm here, ain't I?"

As the story develops we learn that Dougy indeed loves both his wife and his son; but he is in no way affectionate. Too tough I guess.

In catechism class, we learn lots about God's love, which I find examples of all over the Bible; but less about God's affection, which is harder to suss out and communicate to the kids. It's important for all Christians, but especially kids, to understand God's affection for his children. Like Tim Madden, we think of affection as something physical, and among the Trinity only Jesus has a body. But even having one, Scripture doesn't show Jesus using it to hug, kiss, tousle hair, or hold babies. The closest we get in the Bible may be Jesus laying his hands on the little kids; but that's a formal, ritual gesture.

So anyway, in class I elaborate on verses that to me are implicitly affectionate so the kids can get the emotional message. Here are a quick few:

"Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me." Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands..."  (Isaiah 49)

 "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.  Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows." (Luke 12)

"God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes" (Rev. 21)

I don't plan ahead for affectionate verses, but I talk them up when they come around during the year. And I keep an eye out for new ones.

Any of you know Mary Renault? She wrote historical fiction about ancient Greece some decades ago, including The King Must Die and The Persian Boy; and also The Mask of Apollo, about Greek theater. In that last book she spelled the English word scene the Greek way, skene:

 "That evening we were summoned back to meet the chorus-master, the flute-player and the skene-painter...When we heard who were doing the masks and costumes, painting the skene and training the chorus, and for how much, even the Persian-backed play at Delphi looked like a fit-up...The skeneroom was just a flat-topped shed, with a crazyladder to the god-walk on its roof."

In Greek, skēnē/σκηνη is not a uniquely theatrical term. It means tent; what the Romans and the King James Bible would also call a tabernacle, or a booth, a plain little shelter. I imagine that itinerant Greek theater troupes would set up a skene, a tent to house their stuff; have one side painted, and would act in front of that painted side.

Speaking of tents, y'all already know that the wandering Israelites lived in them; and that God dwelled among his people in a tent, too. Considering that a tent's primary function is to provide shade, to overshadow, it's no surprise that the Greek word skene is a cognate of skia/σκιά/shadow. I like to think of skene in its literal sense of shader, or shadower.   

Next Wednesday is the last class of the year, and the last class on the Mass. We'll cover how the Mass fuses with the heavenly wedding feast of the Lamb. We'll look again at Revelation 21, especially, "And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God." This verse will get special attention because it shows not only God's love, but as it turns out, his affection. 

The last few chapters of Revelations tie up every loose end in the Bible: bodies are reunited with souls; the saints are reunited with God; there's a New Jerusalem in which to live. Of course the New Jerusalem is no mean burg: "The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every jewel; the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass."

Yet amid this splendid city God doesn't live in temple, or even a nice house; but a tabernacle, a little house. But can't a little house be spectacular? Not this one. Look at this bit again, and notice the verb: "the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them." Uh-huh. So?

So, the English word dwell is used in the New Testament to translate an assortment of charming Greek verbs. Most of them are based on οἶκος/ oikos/ house, as in economics and ecology:

οικέω/ oikeo/ to house oneself, to dwell.

ἐνοικέω/ en-oikeo/ to in-dwell;

κατοικέω/ kat(a)-oikeo/ to thoroughly dwell (you know: kata as in Catholic and catalog); and

συνοικέω/ syn-oikeō/ that's right, to dwell together (you knew that).

But none of those verbs tell us that God will dwell with his people in the New Jerusalem. This verb does:  σκηνόω/ skēnoō. Not to house oneself; not to dwell per se; but to shade oneself: that is, to set up a skene, to pitch one's tent. Amid the wonder of the City of Gold, God is happy to pitch his tent among his people as he once did in the desert.

Dwelling with us shows God's love; pitching his tent among us shows his affection.

photo from ArmenianHouse.org 

Chelyabinsk Meteor

Y'all are by now aware of Friday's meteor, which busted a million square feet of windowpanes in Chelyabinsk, Russia. And I know what y'all are thinking: what a great opportunity to learn some Russian! Yes!

Chelyabinsk was a small town before WW2 turned it into a huge weapon-manufacturing city, beyond the reach of German bombers. Like most Russian, Chelyabinsk, Russia is pronounceable (and maybe understandable) if you know the letter-sounds. And you know most of them already: 

Ч   е  л    я   б  и   н  с к,      Р  о  с  с  и  я
Ch e   l  ya   b   i   n  s  k,      R  o  s  s   i  ya

Not too bad, especially if you've had some exposure to Greek letters via math, physics, or fraternities. BTW, a Russian C always sounds like S.

Chelyabinsk churned out so many tanks that it was nicknamed Tankograd, Tank City.  Yes, the Russian word for 'tank' is 'tank.'

 Т а н к о г р а д
 T a n k o g r a d

It's all Greek and Roman letters, not too tough. Tankograd made thousands of tanks at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory:

Челябинский  тракторный  завод
Chelyabinskiy   Traktorniy   Zavod

The 'iy' on the end makes the nouns into masculine adjectives because zavod / factory is masculine. But a Chelyabinsk newspaper might be called the Chelyabinskaya Gazette:

  Челябинская     газета
Chelyabinskaya   Gazeta

because a gazette, a newspaper, is feminine.

Among other weapons, Chelyabinsk made Katyushas, trucks mounted with rocket-launchers:

К а т  ю́ ш а
K a t yu sh a

The Katyusha rocket-launcher was named after a girl in a popular wartime song who misses her soldier boyfriend. Katyusha means 'beloved Katie,' a diminutive term of endearment for a woman named 

Екатерина
Ekaterina

It's pronounced "Yekaterina." 

And last is this easy one, which prompted the post. I expect you can figure it out on your own:

 

метеор 

 

Subtled into Nakedness

This posts links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

 Right there it says naked

We cover the first two chapters of Genesis in the first class of each year. The kids figure out pretty fast why Adam and Eve weren't ashamed to be naked in Eden. Later, while discussing chapter 3, they explain why after Adam and Eve sinned, their nakedness was cause for shame. Of course, naked is naked- right? Or could there be more to it?

Someone corresponded with me recently regarding a post I wrote in 2011 about Semitic triliteral roots. Commenting on the wordplay of the Hebrew Old Testament he said: "...somebody who gave me his Hebrew OT had underlined two words in the early chapters of Genesis. If I remember, they were 'erom and "erom, one with the light opening and the other with the ayin opening. One means naked, and the other means subtle -- and I'd say that the author was saying something there. What do you think?"

I didn't think anything yet, but would check it out. I use the Protestant Blue Letter Bible website. I reference the King James Version there. Just FYI, it's very close to the Douay-Rheims Challoner translation.

Not knowing either of those Hebrew words, I first searched for instances of subtle in the KJV O.T., found none. Huh...that was unexpected. Tried naked, found lot of verses. Naked was always used in its literal sense, e.g. "he was naked"  vs. "the naked truth." That might simplify things. Checked the Hebrew for one of the instances of naked:  עָרוֹם `arowm, naked, Strong's H6174. (Strong's Concordance is a Bible Greek and Hebrew language reference) I had a look at the Septuagint translation just to see how `arowm was translated into Greek. In every case, `arowm was translated as gymnos, naked: you know, like in gymnasium. No alternate words, no shadings of meaning: naked is naked. That's good. Yes, `arowm isn't  'erom, but I don't know if there's a single standard for transliterating Hebrew into English letters and sounds.

I noticed that `arowm derives from a root word, עָרַם `aram Strong's H6191. `Aram means shrewd, crafty, and...subtle. That was easy! Now I check on instances of `aram in the OT, and in Genesis in particular, because that was where my friend said the words were underlined. Uh-oh, it's not used at all in Genesis. Huh. That must mean there's another word that's close to`aram, and basically means the same thing. I try Strong's 6190 and 6192: sometimes adjacent words are related. No luck. I go back to`arowm, naked, and try H6173: no luck. H6175, yes: עָרוּם `aruwm, shrewd, crafty, sly, subtle. First use of `aruwm is in Genesis 3:1, "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." (KJV) Aaack! the KJV spells 'subtle' an older way: subtil. That's why I didn't get a word search hit on "subtle." I may as well check on naked again while I'm at it, but this time just looking at Genesis. Ha! There are two Hebrew words for naked in Genesis:

"And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." `arowm, Strong's 6174, I've already looked at that one.

Here is the other naked used three times:

"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.... And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?" This naked, a shameful naked, is עֵירֹם `eyrom, Strong's H5903. And here's an elegant closure: `eyrom's root is H6191, `aram, shrewd, crafty, subtle. If you are like me and can't read Hebrew, you can still see how all these related words have the same 3 letters, and differ mostly by the jots and tittles, the vowel points, that affect pronunciation. When you consider that those markings weren't invented until around 700 A.D, for practical purposes all these similar "words" are more like a single word with an array of vowel changes to clarify particular meanings (sort of like woman and women; or read and read).

So why does all this matter? Well, it's a wordplay-  like this: Adama is Hebrew for ground; Adam is Hebrew for man. So Adam אדם was made of Adama אדמה, see? And both words spring from a common root. Likewise, the name Yitschaq /Isaac יצחק springs from the root word Tsachak צחק, laughter. Sarah laughed at the idea of bearing a son in her old age; and laughed again when Laughter was born.

So in our Genesis case there are two related Hebrew words, which tell us that Adam and Eve didn't realize they were shamefully naked until the serpent had subtled them into eating the fruit. That is, "[T]he serpent was more `aruwm (subtle, tricky)  than any beast...and they knew that they were `eyrom (naked)." I imagine the lesson is that after the Fall, there persists unashamed pre-Fall nakedness within marriage; and shameful, sly nakedness outside of marriage. That's my guess. And it's a lesson I can work into Catechism class starting next year.

An Adam-Adama sort of pun, which I already teach along with Isaac and Laughter. So when it comes to the Old Testament, though the Greek Septuagint often provides specificity, something may be overlooked if you don't check the Hebrew as well.

The Umbrella of the LORD

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. 

Living in the modern, woodsy, and temperate South Carolina Upstate, the kids in Wednesday Night Sunday School don't grasp the Biblical concept of overshadowing right away. To them, overshadowing sounds dark and threatening, like a thundercloud. In prior years, I'd explain that people living in a hot, arid land would regard being overshadowed as a good thing, as in "made in the shade." I might use this example from my Yucatan honeymoon: at Chichen Itza, the sun was so brutal that I hid under a tree at every opportunity. I moved from shade-to-shade as much as possible.

But this year I got a volunteer to come stand in front of me. He acted out my description of being uncovered in the desert, and the sun burning him to a crisp: "Your lips are blistered and cracked, your head feels like it's on fire, you can barely open your eyes, you're cooking to death...what do you need? Water! No, you have water. Class, will water keep him alive 'til sundown? No! What does he need? Shade! Yes! He needs...(I reach into my canvas bag)...an umbrella! Yes!" I open it over the wilting child. "How's that? Good! Well don't just stand there, show us...there ya go, so cool, so nice...think you'll live now? Yes! Y'all tell me what people want at the beach. A beach umbrella! Yes. When it's hot and sunny, being overshadowed is gooood- got it? Yes! OK. Now volunteer, would you like to shade yourself with my umbrella? Yes! Well, you can't have it, it's mine. I can decide to overshadow you or not; and you can decide if you're going to stay in my shade or not. So if I start to move...I move too! Yes. But I don't force you, because you have...free will! Yes- we both agree that you'll be protected by my umbrella."

This year I thought of the umbrella only in time for the Annunciation. Next year I'll use it as soon as we cover Exodus, and discuss the Shekhinah overshadowing the Meeting Tent.

Speaking of Exodus, the Hebrew Old Testament does not have a directly-equivalent word for episkiazo, ἐπισκιάζω  the Greek verb we translate as overshadow. Hebrew instead has a few basic verbs such as sakak and kasah, which fundamentally mean "to cover."  Context often suggests specific meanings such as block, screen, protect, defend, enclose, and overshadow.

Centuries after Exodus was written down, the Hellenic Jewish scholars of Alexandria translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek: the Septuagint. When they translated verbs such as sakak סָכַךְ and kasah כָּסָה into the word-rich Greek language, they didn't say "to cover" every time. So to understand the Biblical idea of overshadowing involves looking at how the concept of covering is used in a spiritual sense in the Old Testament, regardless of the particular verb used in each case. What follows is a representative, but hardly exhaustive list of examples.

Ex 24:15:  Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.

Num 16:42 And when the congregation had assembled against Moses and against Aaron, they turned toward the tent of meeting; and behold, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the LORD appeared.

Ex 40:3 And you shall put in it the ark of the testimony, and you shall screen the ark with the veil.

Ex 25:20 The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be.

That is, the LORD's cloud covers the Meeting Tent; the Meeting Tent covers the Sanctuary; the veil screens off the Holy of Holies; the cherubim overshadow the Mercy Seat. Four degrees of covering which define increasingly-exclusive access. Ultimately only one person, the High Priest, is allowed access to the Mercy Seat.

Some charming and affectionate expressions of being protected by the LORD's overshadowing wings:

Ps 17:8 Keep me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of thy wings

Ps 36:7 The children of men take refuge in the shadow of thy wings.

Ps 91:4  ...he will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.

The tree overshadows the mother; the mother overshadows her children

 A few more coverings:

1Kings 19:19 So [Elijah] departed from there, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing, with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and cast his mantle upon him. (Elijah selects Elisha to be his protege and successor.)

Nahum 2:5 The officers are summoned, they stumble as they go, they hasten to the wall, the mantlet (cover) is set up. (A mantlet, literally a small mantle or cloak, is a military term for a protective screen or shield. For example, a tank typically has an armored mantlet, which covers the opening through which its gun protrudes.)

Ruth 3:9 I am Ruth, your maidservant; spread your wing (i.e., cloak) over your maidservant, for you are next of kin. (Ruth wants Boaz to marry her.)

Those should be enough examples to give you a spiritual sense of covering: selection, separation, protection, dedication. The umbrella does a good job of physically showing kids these characteristics, especially separation. That is, let's say that as a husband I will put one woman, my wife, under my umbrella. She does not get rained on; and I shelter no-one else. My overshadowing is not inclusive, it's exclusive. And if I collapse the umbrella, she'll get wet. There's no spiritual dimension to it- but suppose there were?

Let's focus a bit on the matrimonial aspects of covering. We'll start with Elijah cloaking Elisha. True, they aren't getting married, but this is going to be a covenantal relationship regardless. Elijah physically and symbolically shows that he has selected Elisha; he will protect Elisha; Elisha is separated from his family; Elisha is dedicated to a new purpose. Why is this so? Because by covering Elisha with his mantle, and Elisha 'accepting the mantle,' Elijah echoes aspects of the Jewish marriage rite.

Y'all are probably familiar with the Jewish prayer shawl, the tallit:

You can see how this man covers himself, using his tallit to create his own private, separate, exclusive Meeting Tent. Suppose he were to admit someone else under his tent, could that matter? Indeed it could.

Here's a Jewish man admitting someone else into his tent, spreading his wings over her:

Of course they are getting married. The husband shows that his wife is, that's right, selected, separated, protected, and dedicated by covering her with his tallit. And she shows her acceptance by freely choosing to abide under his wing. By the way, the tallit may also be used to cover the wedding couple, as a tent once covered Abraham and Sarah. The tent covers the couple, the husband covers the wife; once again, a hierarchy of access:

 Yes, those are hockey sticks supporting the chuppah, the canopy.

Boaz understood that Ruth wanted him to marry her; and while spreading his wing over Ruth on a threshing floor would not make a marriage, it would most definitely indicate a commitment to wed. Did Boaz spread his wing over Ruth? Go find out on your own.

And likewise anyone who saw Elijah cover Elisha understood it was no ephemeral gesture.

Here's one more covering verse for you:

Acts 5:15 [T]hey brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them.

We understand from context that Peter's shadow would heal those upon whom it fell. But after Peter had passed, and the afflicted were no longer overshadowed, would they become blind, lame, leprosy-ravaged again? Of course not: the consequences of Peter's overshadowing were permanent.

Suppose the Meeting Tent veils were pulled back; or the Shekhinah, the Glory Cloud, had shifted overhead; or the Tent wasn't pitched yet; or the cherubim weren't poised over the Ark; would any of that have allowed access to the Mercy Seat by anyone less than the High Priest? Of course not: access to the Ark was permanently exclusive, and the Ark itself was permanently reserved for God's Stuff, as we say in Catechism class.

And when Elijah put his mantle back on his own shoulders- was Elisha free to go back to his family and farm, get married, have kids? Again, of course not. The consequence of being covered by Elijah's mantle was permanent.

How about at a wedding? The husband must eventually put away his tallit, remove it from his wife's shoulders. Is his wife still selected, protected, separated, dedicated? Yes. Her status is permanent.

And the chuppah, the canopy- does God cease to cover the marriage when the tent comes down? Of course not.

Now back to the opening verse from Luke 1: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." That is, Mary was selected, protected, separated, and dedicated by God Himself, and Mary agreed to it. After the child was born, was Mary's overshadowed status canceled? Was Mary free to enjoy a life of marital intimacy with Joseph, having more children? The New Ark, once containing not merely God's Stuff, but God Himself, now suitable for holding...regular stuff?

Of course not: as a consequence of being overshadowed by God, Mary's virginal status was permanent.  More permanent than even a marriage vow, or the healings worked through Peter's passing shadow: ever-virgin.

My umbrella eventually has to close; God's doesn't.


Credit to the San Miguel News for the chuppah; and Henry Owassa Tanner for his Annunciation. 

The Forerunner

I bumped into this icon recently at Charleston Vocations:

 

Look at all that cryptic writing at the top...what does it say?

I like to translate as much icon Greek as I can just for the exercise. Because I use icons and other Greek art in Sunday School, I have to know what they say: the kids always ask about the funny marks. And it's good for Catholic kids to get a little exposure to Greek beyond Κύριε ἐλέησον*. The Greek on this icon is too fussy for 6th-graders; but not for you grownups, so let's have a look. 

On the upper left of this icon is a typical abbreviation, OA IO: O Agios Ioannis/  O Άγιος Ιωάννης/ The Holy (sanctus, saint) John (ω is lower-case Ω, O-mega, 'big O'). Now for the right...uh-oh...Led Zeppelin's glyph** ? It doesn't even look like Greek. But it pays to be patient...an M or Y...above that, a D/Δ or an L/Λ. Then...R/P...P/Π...O...S/ς.  Ha! O Pródromos, the Forerunner! But it's as much a puzzle as an abbreviation. The M (not a Y) overlays the P; the D (not an L) sits on top of them. R and O have to be pronounced twice: once in PRO, then in DRO. So the whole icon reads O Άγιος Ιωάννης O Πρόδρομος, Saint John the Forerunner. The West would never have made it so complicated- or so artful.

There are apparently some traditional limits as to how far an iconographer can go in playing with the letters. This recent icon by Efrem Carrasco is very similar, but not identical:

This very old mosaic in Hagia Sophia is more conservative, although it still is free with the letter arrangement. Maybe in Justinian's day the idea of letters-as-art wasn't so advanced.

Another mosaic, this one in Thessaloniki; not like the others, in that a single O does triple duty (pro-dro-mos) but still on the same page, so to speak:

But I'm happy that iconographers can still just spell it all out if they are so moved. Here's a recent work by Ελισάβετ-Ειρήνη Μιχαηλίδου (Elisabet-Irene Mikhailidou): like St. Lucy having her gouged-out eyes in her head and on a plate at the same time, martyred John is both decapitated and intact.

And all the words have all their letters. O AGIOS IOANNIS / O PRO...DROMOS, The Holy John / The Forerunner. As we say in the South: Thank Ya, Jesus, I can read!

*Kyrie eleison

**For those too young to know:

Who What When Where Whow

  Lascaux? Uh-uh. Altamira? Uh-huh.

Who would disagree with the idea that the more cars you can drive, the easier it will be to drive yet another one? Bueller? Bueller? OK, nobody.

The same is true for languages, especially within language families, such as the Indo-European family (IE). IE languages have so much in common that like cars, the more of them you drive, the easier it is to drive another one. Here's a quick (not the only by any means) example:

Check these basic English interrogative particles: who, what, when, where, why, whow. I add a w to how to clarify that "how" belongs to the family of wh- interrogatives.

I had two profitable years of highschool Spanish, followed by two explosive years of Latin. Latin was the first foreign language where I noticed that like English, the interrogative particles shared a common initial sound, kw: Qui, Quod, Quando, Quo, Quid, etc. Not the same sound as in English, but still nice to know the pattern.

Over the next few decades, due to education, travel, and adoption, I learned some more languages; not fluently, but enough to not need English or gestures to communicate. Because the main benefit of speaking a language is to be able to ask questions, a good learning shortcut (among many) was that any language's interrogatives were all likely to start with the same sound, and it's usually true:

Wer, Was, Wenn, Wo, Warum, Wie, in English's lovely and creative cousin, German.

Qui, Que, Quand, Quoi, Comment, Où, in Latin's daughter, French. Note that comment starts with the same k sound as the q- words. And où is short for Latin ubi, which I suppose is itself contracted from an older proto-Latin word starting with q, something like "quobi".

And in Russian: кто/ Kto, что/ Chto, когда/ Kogda, где/ Gdye, куда/ Kuda, как/ Kak. The exceptions in Russian are worth some digression: Kto means who; Chto means what. I'm guessing that distinguishing between people and things created Chto- simply altering the k-sound enough to make a new word. By the way, it's pronounced shto, not chto due to the speed at which the word is said.

Gdye (gd-YEH), where, may be a newer, voiced version of the unvoiced Ktye, an imagined word I'm backfiguring to fit the k- pattern.

These, and many more, Indo-European languages are assumed to spring from a common tongue which left no written record; what Germans call an Ursprache (ur- primeval, original + Sprache, language) My guess is that all of these interrogative particles originate in a single interrogative proto-particle, khuh. Khuh would sound like huh, but with a kh sound like the ch in loch. Here's how over time we get from khuh to the other words:

For some peoples, kh would sharpen to k or kw. Depending on their own aesthetic sense, others would soften kh or kw to wh. From wh, speakers may further soften to h (as in who), or w (even as we do today in saying wite instead of white). W could shift to v as it has done in German. You may think I assume too much, but listen to my Russian-adopted son Michael. When he was first learning English, he could not say 'house'. He said khouse. But 'hospital' was gospital. Why not khospital? Dunno...Russian has its reasons. And 'dinosaur' (dinosawr) was dinosavr.

Now a little digression. You know the intonation for "I don't know" when the note rises on don't and is lower for both I and know: iDUNno. Sometimes we will hum mmmMMMmmm and be understood. Of course without already knowing the English words, the humming won't communicate a thing.

Now you also know what this means: huh?

And huh...they aren't the same.

And this: uh-uh.

And: uh-huh.

Unlike mmmMMMmmm, none of them is based on English; but they can also be hummed or grunted because we know the "words" already. Those sounds aren't words from any language, any Sprache. They don't enjoy the status of "word;" but they're language, and we understand them. My guess is that those sounds are vestiges, living fossils of the oldest human oral communication which predates Proto Indo European. What the Germans might call a Vorursprache, before an original language. Communication so old and basic it's simply nuanced grunting. And huh? would be the root sound from which the word khuh developed.

Maybe the the first word. It'd be just like humans to make their first word a question.

O Fortuna

 This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

A Little House

Most Americans have heard the song O Fortuna in the movies or on TV, although they may not know its name or its composer. It's one of a suite of poems from the Middle-Ages (Carmina Burana, Bavarian Songs) which were set to music by the 20th century German composer Carl Orff. Carmina's a terrific array of moods and musics: Fortuna is epic; others are reflective; some langorous; and some boisterous, once sung in medieval pubs. The drinking songs are grouped under the heading In Taberna, i.e., In the Tavern. In the English sense of a 'public house' being a place to buy a beer, a taberna is a house; or a shed attached to the side of the house as a store or shop.

If you ever get the chance to see Carmina live- do so.

New topic, sort of: you may recall that when the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob reestablished his covenant with the Hebrews, he gave Moses very specific instructions as to how his dwelling, the Meeting Tent, should be constructed. In Hebrew, the 'tent' is ohel/ אהל;  the 'dwelling' is mishkan/ משכן  In the Old Testament their uses frequently overlap where the portability of a nomad's tent melds with the security and serenity of abiding within one's extended family.

In the New Testament, the Epistle to the Hebrews uses the Greek word skene/σκηνή (skein, tent) to describe both God's earthly and heavenly dwellings.

When St. Jerome later translated the Hebrew and Greek Testaments into the Vulgate, he used the existing Latin word tabernaculum, the diminutive of taberna, for the assorted older terms. The Roman Army, which was certainly practical about its religion if not particularly pious, had for centuries built a tabernaculum augurale, a tent, a "little house," in all of its camps for checking the auspices. How nice of Jerome not to invent a new word, but to baptize an old one instead.

[Is augurale related to inaugural? Why, yes it is.]

And how nice that the Church applies that same term to the little houses in which the Lord has dwelled among his people these last two millennia. As the New Testament fulfills the Old, the Church extends and deepens the connection between God and his people.

The Catholic Church doesn't invent anything.

Po polsku, по-русски

Monday's WSJ article on Sunday's Russian election showed this photo:

I try to translate any brief thing I see in the paper: protest banners, business signs, billboards like this one, whatever. Even if I have no success it's still a good exercise.

This one was mostly easy if you're familiar with the Russian (and/or Greek) alphabet:

1. MAPTA/ "Mart-a"/ March. The extra A must mean on or at March. I know only a dab of the case endings.

2. ВЫБОРЫ/ "vuibory"...dunno, move on.

3. ПРЕЗИДЕНТA/ Prezident-a...accusative/objective case probably, thus the final A.

4. POCCИИ/ Rossiy/ (of) Russia. Plain old Russia is РОССИЯ, Rossiya; but the genitive/possessive is POCCИИ. We have it so easy in English.

OK...back to #2...guessing purely from context, probably imperative mood, 'vote.' I sound it out again, "vuibory"...don't know that Russian word at all. But it sounds familiar: veebor? vweebor? weebor? Ha! I remember now. When I was a kid, I loved pickles (still do), and always paid attention to all the kinds of pickles at every grocery store. The Mt. Olive Pickle Co. produced the most exotically-named pickle of them all: Polski Wybor. I figured out Polski; but it wasn't 'til I was a parent that I ran into a Pole at the kiddie park who told me wybor means select, choice, as in the best. So ВЫБОРЫ isn't "vote" so much as "select." 

Heh.

Palmers

 I just flew in from Jerusalem and my arms are really tired

Hey, what kind of bird is this?  An eagle!  Close.  A hawk!  Close again.  A vulture!  Good grief no, try again...it starts with an F.  Falcon!  Yes. In particular it's a peregrine [on the board] falcon. I'll drop dead if anyone knows what peregrine means. It's a French word, and we have an English word that comes from it...guesses? No? Y'all know the Mayflower, right? Yes, the Pilgrims took it to America. Well, while the Mayflower was sailing to America a baby boy was born. On the ship? Yes. Like, on the ocean? Yes, imagine that. The Pilgrim baby boy was named Peregrine...so what word do we have in English like peregrine? Umm...Pilgrim? Yes, genius! And why'd his parents name him that? Because he was a Pilgrim? Yes. What does a pilgrim do? They go somewhere? Yes, they travel to some particular place. So why would we call this falcon a peregrine falcon? 'Cause it's going somewhere? Yes, we might also call it a pilgrim falcon; and what do we say birds do when they go somewhere each year? They migrate! Yes, do they go to different places each year? I think they go to the same place. Yes they do. So a peregrine falcon...migrates. Yes. It travels to...a particular place. Yes.

New topic: where was Jesus crucified? On a hill. Yes, in what city? Beth...Jerusalem! Yes. Well, ever since Christianity got started, people have been going to Jerusalem to see the places where Jesus did things. In the old days people had to travel on foot and by boat to get there. A person traveling from England might be gone from home for a year. Were those people just roaming around, or were they headed somewhere in particular? Somewhere in particular. Yes, which somewhere? Jerusalem. Yes, in the Holy Land. So they were like the falcons. Yes? The falcons went to Jerusalem too? No, I mean both the people and the birds had specific destinations; they didn't just start walking or flying and see where they'd wind up. So if the migrating falcons were called peregrines, what would you call people making a religious trip to Jerusalem? Umm...pilgrims? Yes, pilgrims. But I thought the Pilgrims just came to America. Yes, but those English people called themselves Pilgrims because they were on a religious journey, too. They thought of America as a New Jerusalem. But the older meaning for 'pilgrim' is a Christian going to the Old Jerusalem.

But for most Englishmen, Jerusalem was too far away; so they might make a pilgrimage to Canterbury, a city in England. St. Thomas à Beckett was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was martyred right in the cathedral. Yes? What's an arch-bishop? It's a bishop who has a higher rank than a regular bishop. St. Thomas, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was in charge of all the Catholics in England. By the way, who is our bishop? Macaroni! Uh-uh- it's Guglielmone, you can learn to say it right. Where's he live? In Charleston. Yes, so we are in the Diocese of...Charleston. Yes. But we're also in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, which is headed up by...an...archbishop! Yes, Archbishop Gregory. So who's a bigger deal: an angel or an archangel? An Archangel! Yes, such as...Gabriel? Yes, and...Michael? Yes, good.

Anyway, people would walk to Canterbury to see where St. Thomas was killed, and pray at his shrine. Yes? What's a shrine? It's a special place, usually a chapel or building which contains the body or bones of a saint. Traveling wasn't safe back then, so pilgrims would journey in groups. There's an old set of poems about a group of those pilgrims, called the Canterbury Tales. I studied them in high school. I had to memorize the first poem about the people getting ready in the Spring to make the pilgrimage to St. Thomas' shrine. It says:

"And smale fowles maken melodye, That slepen al the night with open ye..." What's that? It's an older kind of English. It says the small birds make melody all night because it's Springtime, and they are excited. Yes? It sounds weird. Yes, but it sounded normal to the people who spoke that way. 

"Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages" Then folks long to go on pilgrimages: they are energized by Spring just like the birds. And how do Catholics call Springtime? Lent! Yes, because the Spring days...lengthen! Yes! Y'all are so smart.

"And specially, from every shires ende of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende..." Many people would plan a pilgrimage to Canterbury. But a few pilgrims might make the big trip...to...Jerusalem! Yes. The Canterbury Tales call those Holy Land pilgrims palmers: "And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes. To ferne halwes, kouthe in sondry londes/ and palmers for to seek strange shores. To distant saints, known in other lands." Why would they be called palmers?  'Cause they got palms there? Yes, genius, they'd bring back palms as souvenirs...why? Because of Palm Sunday and all. Yes. Often the palms would be formed into a particular shape...any guesses?  A cross? Yes, how did you know? 'Cause people in church make their palms into crosses.  Yes, that's a pilgrim tradition that we still observe.

Palm Sunday kicks off Holy Week, the biggest week in the Catholic year. Yes? Is it bigger than Christmas? Oh my yes. Holy Week is the last week of...Lent! Yes, and what's the Sunday after Holy Week? Easter Sunday! Yes. Even today pilgrims to the Holy Land like to be there for Holy Week because it's such an important week for Christians.

Somebody tell me about the Friday of Holy Week. It's Good Friday. So tell me about it. Jesus was crucified. Yes, but that was later; start in the morning...he had a nice chat with a Roman guy...Pontius Pilate! Yes, and...well, he said Jesus would get crucified. Yes, more or less. Then the Romans put Jesus and his cross in a jeep? No he had to carry it. Yes, more please. It was heavy and he fell down going up the hill. Yes, what hill? Umm...Calvary. Yes. What's the other name for the hill...starts with a G...Gethsemane! Good guess, but no. That's where Jesus prayed on Thursday night. Another hill that starts with a G...O...L...Golgotha! Yes. Doesn't that sound dreadful? Gol-go-tha. Anything else happen before Jesus got to the top? A lady washed his face with a rag and his picture got on it. Yes, St. Veronica. And then...he was crucified. Yes, and then...he died. Yes, and...no guesses?...they took Jesus down, and then...they buried him. Yes. Well on Good Friday especially, pilgrims, palmers in Jerusalem walk along the streets that Jesus probably walked on that first Good Friday. It's called the Way of the Cross in English; in Latin we say Via Crucis. People walk a bit, then stop, pray, and remember one of these events that happened to Jesus. Then they walk a bit more, and stop, pray and remember again. Yes? That's like in church we...stop! Don't say it yet, genius! You'll get your chance.

Now how do palmers get to Jerusalem nowadays? They fly? Yes, most of them. It takes a day or two, tops. But centuries ago, many Englishmen might not have the health or money to travel for weeks or months to Jerusalem and walk the Way of the Cross. So they might go to...Canterbury? Yes. But suppose you were too poor or old to even leave your village, but you still "longed to go on pilgrimage"- what could you do instead? OK, genius, tell us. You could go to Stations of the Cross in the church! Yes, why? Because the Stations are like where the people walk in Jerusalem! Yes! Going to Stations during Lent is a way to go on a little pilgrimage. It's not a physical pilgrimage 'cause we stay in town, but it's still...a spiritual pilgrimage! Yes!

So if you go to Stations with your parents and you get bored with all the reading, and tired of all the kneeling & genuflecting, think about palmers walking the Via Crucis in Jerusalem. Think about the pilgrims walking to Canterbury. And think about all the other Catholics around the world making a spiritual pilgrimage by attending Stations just like you.

Fine Art 6: More Spacious than a Tea Party

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets 

The January 4 class included a review of the Hail Mary prayer via the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. We had already treated the Annunciation and Visitation in the December 14 class, but without a couple of instructive artworks. [The class calendar is deliberately scheduled to finish the Old Testament in time to coordinate Mary Stuff with the Church feasts of Dec 8, Dec 25, and Jan 1.]

First I showed the kids this miniature of the Isenheim Altarpiece, explained how big it really is (about 9' x 16') how the panels work, etc. My sister got this for me as a Christmas gift when she was in Colmar, France last summer. Which was way before my wife told me a few weeks ago that the Annunciation I liked so much but couldn't name was the Isenheim Annunciation. More than coincidence?

We then focused on the Annuciation panel, which isn't visible in the photo above, using this color handout:

 Our discussion was very close to what I anticipated in an earlier post. The kids recalled Gabriel's greeting to Mary, and saw that it was directly quoted in the Hail Mary. The kids then recounted the Visitation, and recognized Elizabeth's greeting in next bit of the prayer.

I then asked the kids to guess the Catholic significance of January 1. None could, but that was OK. I told them it was the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. To add dimension to this feastday, we reviewed a handout of this ikon:

The common name for this ikon type is Platytera, Πλατυτέρα, meaning more ample, broader. That's short for "more ample than heaven." [Plat- is related to English flat, German platt, and French platte, as in the Platte (broad) River] It means that Mary, by containing the Creator of the Universe in her womb, was figuratively larger than infinity. Or as an old Greek hymn puts it, "He whom the entire universe could not contain was contained within your womb, O Theotokos (God-birther).” It's a terrific teaching tool that illustrates an aspect of Jesus' humility, and that Mary was the mother of not only Jesus' human nature, but of his entire person, comprising both his human and divine natures. That is, Mary is the Mother of God- just as the Hail Mary says. That literal womb makes this a very unusual Platytera, which was completed in January 2011 by the ikonographer Tom Athanasios Clark in the apse of St. George's Orthodox Church in Shreveport, La.

Most Platyteras look like this one:

Which is fine as far as it goes...whose lap is Jesus sitting on- his babysitter's? Just kidding, but sitting on a lap isn't what I'd call compelling visual testimony to the intimate prenatal relationship between God the Son and his momma. By the way, the Greek is Πλατυτέρα των Ουρανών, Platytera ton Ouranon, Wider than Heaven.

Or they're like this one:

This Platytera's better because it's a bit more expressive (although in an abstract sense) of Jesus being physically inside Mary. But neither of these is as effective as that cutaway pink uterus in the first example. The kids get that one right away: Mary's tummy, her womb.

We may as well learn some more Greek while we're at it:  those letters in the above ikon are M-R and Th-U. The squiggies above the letters mean those are abbreviations. They're short for Μητηρ Θεού/ Mitir Theou/ Mother of God. I always wonder: if you're going to spend a couple thousand hours or so on a mosaic, why cut corners with abbreviations?

To finish our Marian train of thought, I bring out a chair that my kids sat on when they were practically toddlers- a chair like one of these...

...and demonstrate how Mary was more spacious than a tea party.

Murmuring Grumblers

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets 

We are not grumbling

When we cover Exodus in Wednesday Sunday School, I emphasize to the kids how the Israelites whine to Moses about anything that isn't to their liking. For example in Numbers 11, they are tired of eating manna: "the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick. But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all beside this manna before our eyes." Waaah!

They complain so much that Moses tells God, "I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness." That's right, just kill me now. (Priests probably never have such sentiments; modern flocks are much more docile.)

"Whine" is my word; it's more fun than complain, gripe or grumble. But Exodus in the KJV uses none of those words: it says "murmur," or more clearly, "murmur against."  I'm not fond of using murmur in the sense of grumbling: to me, murmur is to speak quietly in love, the very opposite of grumbling. Too bad for me. Murmur is a Romance (not that kind of romance) word which English gets from Latin through French; in St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate, the word for Israelite grumbling is murmurare. Oh well, I lose this one.  

 Murmur is probably imitative of some natural rhythmic sound, mur-mur-mur... a creek? Likewise, babble imitates the ba-ba-bla-bla of babies or foreigners, and descends from Greek barbaros through Latin babbulus. And the coo-cooing of doves is expressed in Greek by the verb gogguzo / γογγύζω, which means-  murmur. In both Old (LXX) and New Testaments, gogguzo is the Greek word for grumble, murmur. A Greek noun for murmur is mourmourisma/ μουρμούρισμα, but it doesn't show up in the Bible. Still nice to know. Now I wonder where the Romans got murmurare from...I can't imagine.

The murmur business matters in class because I use murmuring to connect two scenes: the Israelites' desert murmurings against Moses right before the manna bread miracle; and the murmurings against Jesus when he hints at a future bread miracle. That is, Exodus doesn't speak about symbolic "bread from heaven," and neither does Jesus. In both instances the people murmur their obstinacy.

Exodus 16: "And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness: And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you."

Exodus 16 in the KJV says murmur eight times, including this packed sentence: "And Moses said...the LORD heareth your murmurings which ye murmur against him: your murmurings are not against us, but against the LORD."

Then in John 6: "Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'/   "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst./  The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven." They said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" Jesus answered them, "Do not murmur among yourselves./  For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed."/ Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at it, said to them, "Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before?"

In Exodus, people murmur; God provides miracle water. People murmur; God provides miracle bread. People murmur; God provides miracle flesh. In John, people want another bread miracle; instead of working a miracle, Jesus makes an odd prophecy about bread. They murmur about that; Jesus says to stop murmuring, and expands the prophecy to bread and flesh. People murmur some more; people argue; people leave.

Remember, the Old Testament was translated into Greek about 200 years before the first Gospels were written. Writers of the New Testament would surely know how a given Greek word was (or wasn't) used in the O.T. before using it (or not) in the New. So John's author says gogguzo / γογγύζω / murmur when people get cranky as Jesus prophesies his own bread/ flesh miracle through the manna miracle, which also followed "murmuring."

But the writer didn't have to say murmur. He could've used other Greek N.T. verbs such as mempsimoiros / μεμψίμοιρος / complain (Jude 1:16: "These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts..."), but didn't. He used the one word that makes a clear connection to the critical Old Testament antecedents. In fact, he takes every opportunity to say murmur, as though he were trying to make the connection as obvious as possible.

In class, murmur just doesn't register with 6th graders, so I say grumble, which is an accepted translation of goggyzo.The thing is, to say grumble is to take a step away from goggyzo's literal, imitative murmuring sound of doves' goo-goo. My consolation is that there are only 5 other people on the planet besides me who are interested, only 2 of them care, and none of them are in 6th grade Wednesday Sunday School. So grumble it is.

But it's worth checking a few translations, isn't it. Hello...isn't it? Sure it is.

The Douay-Rheims and the King James say murmur in both Exodus and John, and everywhere else; but never say grumble at all, even to translate synonymous Greek verbs, which I will not list here. You're welcome. In this instance the D-R and KJV are utterly consistent and simple. Ditto Jerome's Vulgate: unsurprisingly it always uses murmurare. The RSV says murmur in both passages, but may say grumble elsewhere. I can live with that; to an extent, it tends to make the use of murmur more distinctive. Good ol' RSV. The NIV, which I usually object to, says grumble all the time and never says murmur. Weirdly enough, for once I prefer the NIV's translation for the kids- and probably for most adults. Stranger yet, the NAB, which is the Bishops' Official Catholic Bible, says the Israelites grumbled in the desert, and the Jews murmured in Galilee. As my mother-in-law says: oh dear. To me that obscures a connection that's pretty clear in Greek, and in every other translation I've looked at. And not just a connection, but a Catholic connection. Why wouldn't the approved Catholic Bible be all over this?

Dunno....everybody else is whether they intend to be or not.