PhDniX's blog

Pious Love

I skipped a week, I'm very sorry. Been busy. I'll try to compensate by updating twice this week.

Today I wanted to discuss a Greek sentence, in English this time. Let's take a line by Socrates as written by Plato in Euthyphron:

ἆρα τὸ ὅσιον ὅτι ὅσιόν ἐστιν φιλεῖται ὑπὸ τῶν θεῶν, ἢ ὅτι φιλεῖται ὅσιόν ἐστιν;

"Is piety loved by the gods because it's pious, or is it pious because it's loved by them?"

ἆρα -- Particle introducing a question
τὸ ὅσιόν -- `pious' neuter nominative substantivised adjective , preceded by a definite article.
ὅτι -- `because', expresses causality
ὅσιόν -- `pious' adjective nominative neuter.
ἐστιν -- `to be' 3rd person singular active present.
φιλεῖται -- `to love' 3rd person singular medio-passive present.
ὑπὸ -- `by' expresses the actor in a passive sentence, the complement takes the genitive case
τῶν θεῶν -- `god' Masculine genitive plural, preceded by a definite article.
ἢ -- `or'
ὅτι -- `because', expresses causality
φιλεῖται -- `to love' 3rd person singular medio-passive present.
ὅσιόν -- `pious' adjective nominative neuter.
ἐστιν -- `to be' 3rd person singular active present. followed by a `;'  which is the Greek question mark.

Lysias

Sorry for the late update, and sorry for the rather inaccessible update. I have a word-per-word glossed Classical Greek text from Lysias. I'm sorry to say though, that for now, it's in Dutch, since I use it as my homework in my Greek classes. But I figured it'd be better than updating nothing at all. So here it is.

Link to Lysias

Ook dat nog!

Today, a bit later than planned, I will write another update. This time it won't be specifically about the translation of a certain text, but I'll show some stuff about my own language, Dutch, and some thoughts on etymology.

First of all a translation of the title:

Ook dat nog!

Which literally translates to: also that still!
Which is a rather odd construction which I can not fully explain, but the more natural translation would be `that's just great'.

It would be used in the context like this:

Imagine yourself working on a paper all night, and you suddenly find out you were supposed to also (the ook part) finish another paper. That's the moment you'd say `ook dat nog!'.

Ook is an interesting word. It would mean something as `as well, too, also'. I started wondering about it's etymology, and my first instinct said. it must be related to the Latin suffix -que, Gothic suffix -uh, which both mean `and'. -que is suffixed to the last word of an and-construction. Like: senatus populusque romanus `senate and people of Rome'.

-que goes back to PIE *kʷe. Tracing this to gothic, by applying Grimm's law you'd get **-ƕe. Supposing it's unstressed position cause it to lost the last vowel, you'd get a form like **-h (ƕ word-finally becomes h, saƕan > sah). Since -h is difficult to pronounce, especially after a consonant, you'd expect an epenthetic vowel. resulting in the attested form -uh. One can't help but think that this looks an awful lot like german `auch' (same meaning as Dutch ook).

Now there is one enormous problem in this supposed etymology. The k in ook would not be explained. If auch comes from a proto germanic -h. Then also Dutch would have a -ch. Now it just seems that the German version is from an original -k that underwent  the High German Sound shift. And there is no way that PWGm. *k comes from PIE *kʷ.

Now there's only one way out of this mess, and that's saying that the -k in Dutch might be dialectal or from Frisian. I'm not sure if it would work for Frisian, since I'm not well known with the language. But taking a look at the Woordenboek Der Nederlandse Taal (Dictionary of the Dutch language) quickly killed all my hope.

voegw. en bijw. Got. auk, ohd. ouh, auh, mhd. ouch, nhd. auch, ags. eác, eng. (verouderd) eke (zie nog andere vormen bij MURRAY 3, 66 c), on. auk, os. ôk, mnl. oec. De oorsprong van deze algemeen Germaansche partikel is niet met zekerheid te bepalen. Gewoonlijk brengt men ze in verband met den wortel auk-, vermeerderen, waarvan got.aukan, ohd. ouhhôn, ags. eácian, on. auka, os. ôkjan, mul. ooken (verg. ook nog FRANCK, Elym. Wdb.).

I don't feel much for give a word per word translation of this entry. But what anyone should note, is that Gothic actually already has a word for `ook' being `auk'. Which quickly kills of my fantasies of it being related to Gothic suffix -uh.

Another thing that is stated, that the origins of this particle are unclear, generally it is connected with the germanic root *auk-  which mean `to add'.

Now you see, how some, `blatantly clear' etymologies can actually be wrong as well. Oh well, it was a fun thought experiment.