Devshirme

The intrepid Sal Ferriera has hooked me up with some good follow-up links on the issue of what language was spoken when St. Paul landed in Malta – check them out here and here (obrigado, Sal!).

The common wisdom is that Arabic, as spread during the onset of Islam, only displaced other Semitic languages but never really dislodged non-Semitic tongues.  Makes sense, but I would argue it never totally displaced the Semitic languages either.  People in Iraq and Morocco do not, for example, speak Central Arabian Arabic.  They largely speak their original language with a thick Arabic veneer.  When Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ movie came out some years back I went to see it with a group from the seminary, and I was curious if my Levantine school chums would be able to understand the Aramaic spoken in the movie.  Despite the European pronunciation from the characters, they did indeed understand most of what was spoken.  Levantine Arabic is pretty much Aramaic (more properly Assyrian) with a huge influence of Arabic proper.

Using this model it is quite likely that the original Phoenician tongue on Malta has survived and developed through the years and absorbed vocabulary and influences from other languages.  I imagine Paul would have either spoken Aramaic with his Punic interlocutors and eventually come to an understanding, or he would have had a strained, very formal conversation in biblical Hebrew and hopefully both parties would figure it out.

The latest issue of Sofia – our monthly ‘zine – came out today.  Copies should be arriving in the mail soon, and they are available in the narthex.  The website will have the December issue up at the beginning of the month.  Here is an excerpt from my article (the Santa picture I reference can be found here):

American Christmas largely developed through the popular reception of the writings of Washington Irving and Charles Dickens.  Traditions like Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and yule logs are largely German or Germanic in origin, and were popularized by those writers.  Even before their time, the many German- and Dutch-speaking enclaves in the Colonies and early America celebrated with these traditions.  Santa Claus is a combination of St. Nicholas and Father Christmas, a religious figure with pagan origins going back to the Anglo-Saxon god Woden, the equivalent to the Norse god Odin and the source of the word Wednesday (Woden’s Day).  Santa Claus today appears rather cartoonish, with his red suit and boots and hat, but if you look at depictions of him going back a few centuries you can see the evolution from his religious roots.  The attached illustration of Father Christmas from the late 17th century could almost have been copied from an Orthodox icon of St. Nicholas.  The name Santa Claus itself comes from the saint, and he was known for his generosity and gift-giving.  Forget the elves and North Pole stuff; Santa Claus is a modern depiction of our saint and offers us a teaching tool as we return to the religious roots of Christmas.

I have been participating in the Preachers Institute “read the New Testament in the 40 days leading up to Christmas” project.  It is quite enjoyable and edifying.  I tend to concentrate my scripture readings on the Old Testament, so this exercise has provided me with a refresher course on parts of the NT that I do not read very often.  In finishing up Acts the other day, I came across the episode where Paul gets shipwrecked on Malta.  Maltese, famously, is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script, but modern Maltese took form after the Arabs conquered the island during a later wave of Muslim conquest.  So what language was spoken on Malta when Paul landed there?  Phoenician of some sort?  Latin?  Does anyone know?  I imagine Paul would have been able to adapt to whatever Semitic tongue that may have been spoken there, and could certainly communicate in Greek and Latin (he was a Roman citizen).  What was proto-Maltese?

I generally don’t discuss politics, and I certainly don’t venture much onto the topic of Greek politics, but I have found myself recently talking about the drachma, the old Greek currency replaced by the Euro some years back.  I have even come up with a nice little catch-phrase, although I suppose I heard it elsewhere first: “The drachma was just fine for several thousand years”.  I pipe up with this, as you can imagine, during talks about Greece and the EU.

The Wiki article gives a pretty good idea of the history of this unit of money.  I always knew that the Armenian dram derived its name from the drachma but never made the connection with the dirham of Morocco and the UAE.  I have a pretty decent collection of coins from all over the world.  It started when my dad would bring back change from his business trips, and it is now at the point where if I find out someone is going to a country whose coins I don’t have I ask if they can bring back a few for me.  The UAE coins are in the part of the collection still at my ‘rents; I need to reclaim these along with other stuff that I have there (a process that will probably never end).

The coin names likely spread due to Alexander the Great’s travels.  It is amazing how remnants of his conquests and his successors’ rule have survived, whether it is in the DNA of the Kalash, places names like Kandahar, literary expressions like “Gordian knot”, or coinage from places like Morocco where Alexander never set foot.

I have been at the new church, Sts. Anargyroi, in Marlborough for several weeks now and have already written several articles for our monthly zine Sofia (you can read the November issue by clicking on the Sofia button on the home page).  The December one will contain my musings on the Advent season versus the Christmas season, and one thing I mention is the tendency for the local oldies station to play “holiday” (as they call it) music earlier and earlier each year.  I generally boycott until close to Christmas, but in my unfocused button-pushing while driving I still hit the last programmed button occasionally and end up hearing the Christmas music.  Usually I immediately switch stations but if it is a Carpenters Christmas song then I have to hear it out, regardless of how early in Advent we are.  Today I heard (There’s No Place Like) Home For The Holidays – the wiki article points out that it is really more of a Thanksgiving song.  There is a line that goes “the traffic is terrific”, meaning that there is a lot of traffic and it is not a good thing.  This line struck me because it is a rare use of terrific in its original form, with the root of terror, meaning really bad.  The word today is used almost exclusively as a slang term to mean really good.  The Merriam Webster definition bears this out, with the “really bad” definition listed first and the “really good” one listed third.  Interesting stuff.  Some of the Christmas classics contain quaint language but this is an example of a word where the meaning has totally changed in general usage.  This phenomena is one of the reasons that the King James version of the Bible is, to me, not good for everyday use; the problem is not that the language is archaic but that many words are used in it that are still around and have totally different meanings.

From where does the Greek word for chair, karekla, originate?  And, why on earth am I even thinking about this?  The question came about from my recent stint substituting for Rubina as teacher of the senior Greek School class.  In addition to the lessons in the book we did some stuff on etymology, transliteration, metathesis, and other fun language things.  At one point I commented on how there are many Greek words for clothing, food and other cultural stuff that actually come from French, for various reasons.  Arabic shares this to some extent; very often things that didn’t exist in central Arabia back in the day take their name from French or another language.  The word for snow, telj, comes from the French neige, for example.

I was idly wondering if the Greek karekla and the Arabic kursi (chair) somehow were related, despite being from different language families.  The krk of the Greek matches up with the triconsonantal root of the Arabic krs – the hard k can become an s in certain word travels.  However, karekla is not attested in ancient Greek.  Kathedra in Greek matches up nicely with karekla – the vowels are the same (usually it is all about the consonants in these matters but vowels have a role as well) as is the syllabification.  And as it turns out, karekla does come from kathedra (where we get Cathedral) via Venetian – kathedra went to Latin and then Venetian and came back to Greek as karekla.

The Arabic kursi is in the Qur’an as a word for footstool or throne, and it is cognate to kisseh in Hebrew which also means throne (it is similar in most other semitic languages).  How about the English word chair itself?  Well, it too comes from kathedra, eventually.  More here.

It is that time of the year – registration for Greek School at the Cathedral today and tomorrow, with the traditional Sept. 14  agiasmo service kicking off the year and classes starting the next day.  Greek School can be tough for parents – everyone’s schools seemingly get out at different times, some parents live several towns aways, etc.  But I think it is well worth sending our children to the Cathedral’s Greek Afternoon School.  Here are a few reasons:

-First of all, it is a good thing to learn a foreign language.  Americans are not great at this, but I think a big reason is that each state speaks the same language (think Europe, where most neighboring states speak different languages and people tend to know more than one).  Greek is a heritage language for many of us at the Cathedral, but learning modern Greek opens the door to learning one of the great classical languages.  I can tell you that I did very well on my verbal SATs partly because if I didn’t know a word I could figure it out from Greek roots.

-Our school is accredited, and the teachers are certified in teaching Greek.  Our students can receive credit in school for these classes.  I should also mention that our teachers are awesome – tireless, dedicated, super-smart and able to make every day fresh and interesting.  Unlike my Greek School experience many years ago, our students are tracked – those who speak Greek at home go on one path, and those who don’t are put on another so they learn at the appropriate pace.

-Greek School at the Cathedral is more than just language.  The students learn religion, history and cultural stuff like dances and poems.  It is a great supplement to Sunday School and other ministries – time spent with fellow students in Greek School means more time at the church and more time with their church friends.

-The various performances during the year get the students comfortable with public speaking in high-pressure situations.  I know that memorizing and reciting poems as a little kid helped prepare me for what I do now; I am very comfortable speaking in public, and I am sure that those early performances (which I dreaded back in the day) were part of it.

I could go on with reasons.  Greek School is worth the driving and time commitment – we are blessed to have such a program.

Blogging has been almost non-existent around here lately, so I decided to challenge myself (and anyone on Facebook who is interested) by attempting to blog for the 40 days of Lent just as I did for the Preachers Institute’s Advent blogging exercise.  I even got Fr. Peck’s cyber-blessings to do this, so here goes…

Today is Clean Monday.  Interestingly, in Greek the term is Kathara Deutera rather than kathari – an adverb is used rather than an adjective.  ”Cleanly” Monday is more awkward but probably more accurate.  For most of us, this begins the true Lenten fast.  This year I am doing the complete vegan thing, with exceptions for fish at mercy meals and the like.  We emphasize the spiritual aspect of fasting – the introspection, almsgiving and focus on prayer that goes with it rather than the food part, but there is also a physical aspect to this.  Fasting has its origins, I imagine, as a “preview of hell” – not eating food is bad for you and makes you miserable.  Our fasting, which is not a total abstention from food as it was back in the day, is an exercise in focus and sacrifice.  It also has many health benefits.  I am increasingly convinced that a vegan, or at the very least a vegetarian, lifestyle is the way to go.  One of these Lenten seasons I am going to go vegan and never go back.  I am not going to go into it too much here – there is a ton of material available on the web analyzing the benefits and potential risks of a vegan lifestyle.  I am writing this merely to emphasize that while the spiritual stuff is more important for us (and as the Bible tells us what comes out of the mouth is more important than what goes into it) we should not discount the cleansing goodness of the Lenten eating lifestyle.  More tomorrow.  Tonight we have compline/apodeipnon service, as we will every Monday at the Cathedral during Lent.  We have not done this service since long before I came to Worcester, so it will be a nice restoration as well as another tool to help us refocus ourselves during the forty days.

I was on my way to GOYA last Tuesday and I saw a bumper sticker on the car in front of me.  It had a column on each side and a Latin phrase, one which I didn’t recognize (not that I know Latin) in the middle.  I tried repeating it to myself – I love looking up Latin phrases when I come across them – but luckily came to a red light behind the car, so I was able to write it down as a text and save it as a draft.  I suppose this violates the texting while driving law, even though I was not moving, but how is this any different from jotting it down on a piece of paper?  Anyways, I got to GOYA and we tried to crack the case.  Even though some of the kids take Latin and we had our advisor Lorelei, who speaks Romanian, we couldn’t figure it out.  I looked it up online.  Here is the Latin text from the bumper sticker:

Si hoc legere potes eruditissimus es sed parum distas

So – the meaning?  Basically, if you can read this you are well-educated and far too close!  Very clever indeed.

I just finished a fascinating thriller called Impact by Douglas Preston.  His books, both solo and with Lincoln Child, are the kind that keep me up at night so I can read as much as possible, even though the loss of sleep will haunt me the next day – they are that good.  This book is about as close to science fiction as I get in my reading.  Preston depicts a small Maine fishing village, a California space research lab, Cambodian illegal gem traders, and Washington bureaucrats all with stunning depth and, as far I can imagine, accuracy.  He also throws in the occasional fun word like desuetude or quincunx.  Desuetude I kind of knew, or at least could figure out from context, but quincunx threw me for a loop.  You can look it up – it is basically four things in a square with a fifth in the middle, like the pips on the five side of a die.  The only thing I could figure out from the word itself is that it had something to do with the number five.  There are lots of words like this – tricycle, quartet, etc.  But there are also words with a number root that have lost their original meanings.  Decimate means to kill ten percent of something but it is now used to denote a total rout.  I had thought section meant one-sixth of something, but Merriam Webster does not seem to bear this out and traces the origins to a Latin word for to cut.  Sextant, the thing sailors would use to figure out where they were, has origins in the number six, so maybe that is what I was thinking.  There are others but I am blanking…