Hakan wrote
> While we're still on to the Latin thread...
>
> Several times I've picked up my Latin dictionary and flipped
through
it, trying to find a word or a concept that would be strange or
incomprehensible for modern people. I've been doing this because I've
often heard that we should not believe that we are able to understand
people who lived a couple of centuries before us - their concepts and
their world view were so different from ours that it is impossible to
really understand them, even if we understand their language. If this
was true, I guess a dictionary of a language which was spoken in a
society that existed 2000 years ago would contain words or concepts
that are alien, perhaps incomprehensible to us. I still haven't found
any. Of course, a Latin dictionary does not contain the whole
language
as it was spoken by people who used it as a mother tongue: there's no
everyday speech, no street talk, no slang. Would the language look
more alien to us if such words were included?
>
> Perhaps I'm a romantic, but I suspect that the difference between
"us" and "them" is sometimes overestimated. I find Plato's dialogues
excellently readable and they are almost 2500 years old. I believe I
understand what they're talking about, and I believe I can hear the
different "tones" of the text: it changes from joking to serious,
from
deep thoughts to a satire of pompous empty speech in a way that needs
no explanation for modern readers. Is this an illusion? To me, the
dialogues are obviously written by someone who knew exactly what he
was doing, someone who knew how to communicate his ideas while
keeping
his audience interested. (I've always found it weird to read that
"Plato hated literature and wanted to ban it" because of a few
sentences in "The State" - if he really hated literature, then why
did
he choose to present his philosophy as literary dialogues, he could
have written like Heraclitus or Aristotle...) The translation of the
dialogues that I read was from the 1920's or 30's - it's already
dated, but the ideas and the discussions in the dialogues are still
alive.
>
> I've been thinking about this for a long time and any comment would
be welcome.
I can think of differences. But not through Latin but through my
understanding of Australian Aboriginal language and culture. The
Aboriginal term "Dreaming" whilst it does mean the same as our word,
also has many other meanings that overlap with "lore", "law",
"country", "creation", "inspiration" - meanings with which there are
no English equivalents. A "song-line" in Aboriginal English means a
great deal. To non Aboriginals it sounds suspiciously like "the line
of a song" which it is not (readers of Bruce Chatwins "Song Lines"
will understand what I mean).
This difference in concept or in percept I feel underlies every
language. We are told that "tout la monde" in French means
"everybody" in English, but does it? "All the world" has a different
subtle meaning than "chaque corps". Gravitas in Latin does not mean
Gravity in English (although it etymologically comes from the same
sense). Thus in Latin we may have to give two or three words to
translate a Latin concept into English, where in Latin one word would
suffice. The same in English.... I once had the peculiar task of
translating Marx's Communist Manifesto into NeoMelanesian Pigin and I
know what it means. "Proletarian" comes out as "Sampela samting
bilong manmeri husat isanupim ananit olgeta arapela manmeri".
Hope this helps
Regards
John