#philologist

[literarydesire]

That thing when you ask your professor a question and they get that distant look in their eyes and stare into space for a while and you can see them racking their brain for an answer and then, they get really excited when they realize that they dont know so now they have an excuse to research something new >>>

[midnightshaze13]

No one is aware of how obsessed I am from my essence of being a philologist, which is the entire core of my person, the fact that Taylor Swift has released an album called Tortured Poets and The Anthology on these piano poems 📜🎹 !! (more than songs, they feel like piano poems) everything is either hyperbole, sattire or/and an exaggeration of the tragedy and I LOVE it entirely

@taylorswift thank you I adore this album and I protect and appreciate these lyrics with my heart

[jrrtolkiennerd]

So, the literal translation of cul-de-sac (which in the U.S. is what we dub neighborhood streets that either end in a dead end or a one way round about) is “bottom of a sack.” Hmm, interesting phrase. Sounds kind of familiar too.

Well, another word for a sack is a bag, and the bottom of a bag is like its end, so…

Wait a minute.

It’s another language joke. He snuck another language joke in. Omg Tolkien how many of these are there?!

[butchkaramazov]

[literarydesire]

Me when Roman poets contract verb conjugations to make it fit with the metre but the contraction coincides with another, pre-existing conjugation so you just kinda have to guess

Leonid Pasternak  (Ukrainian, 1862–1945) - The Torments of Creative Work

[art-portraits]

Thomas Ruddiman, 1674 - 1757. Philologist and Publisher

Artist: William Denune (Scottish, 1715-1750)

Date: 1749

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: National Galleries' Scotland, Edinburg, Scotland

Description

Thomas Ruddiman was a Scottish publisher and classical scholar. Born in Banffshire, he received a classical education at King’s College, Aberdeen and worked as a schoolmaster in Laurencekirk before moving to Edinburgh in 1700. He started out as a library assistant, but soon became associated with Edinburgh printer and bookseller Robert Freebairn. By 1712 Ruddiman and his brother Walter had established their own printing business. They specialised in school books and their most celebrated title was Ruddiman’s own ‘Rudiments of the Latin Tongue’, first published by Freebairn but subsequently ‘printed and sold by the author’. From 1724 onwards Ruddiman printed the newspaper ‘The Caledonian Mercury’, a platform for moderate Jacobitism that supported Prince Charles Edward's cause in 1745.

[gravedust412]

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL

[literarydesire]

Todays quotes from Dorothy, my ancient greek professor:

"Have you accepted Dionysos as your lord and savior?"

"Hello, and welcome to White Man studies!"

"Oh for fucks sake girls"

"They were what we may call... tent-mates"

"The monks were terrible at greek and that leaves us in quite the predicament"

"How can you be a classisist and homophobic? Do you just ignore 80% of everything you read?"

"Every spear in the Aeneid is a cock. Just remember that"

[fictionadventurer]

I don't think we talk often enough about how amazing a poet J.R.R. Tolkien was.

I just read The Lay of Arthur and it was amazing. I got to the battle scene and was so caught up in the excitement and the sound that I just had to read it aloud. It was its own kind of adrenaline rush. I haven't been caught up in poetry like that in a long time.

[finelythreadedsky]

 On one level the book is about the life of a woman who is hardly more than a token in a great epic poem, on another it’s about how history and context shape how we are seen, and the brief moment there is to act between the inescapable past and the unknowable future. Perhaps to write Lavinia Le Guin had to live long enough to see her own early books read in a different context from the one where they were written, and to think about what that means.

-Jo Walton

[literarydesire]

Imagine rocking up to the function with this bad boy and singing the entire Iliad

Ancient Greek lyre.

Find spot: Athens Materials: wood, tortoise-shell Period / culture: Classical Greek Production date: 5thC BC-4thC BC (probably)

Source

[exercise-of-trust]

it baffles me, though it probably shouldn't, that someone can write an entire rpf novel about j. r. r. tolkien finding a mysterious ancient book and going on thrilling international adventures, and get it published with enough success that i can accidentally stumble across it in the sff section of the local library

[uritur-infelix]

Thinking about the time I was in an Old Irish classroom and we were reading a poem about an Irish winter, and my teacher had the air conditioner on full-blast, conveniently hitting me in the face with its icy gusts. It's like she was trying to simulate the Irish winter we were reading about 😂😂😂

[melaniebarker]

so in the Goblin Emperor etc, Katherine Addison uses singular vs plural pronouns with an informal/formal distinction (T-V distinction if you're feeling fancy, after Latin tu and vos). This is a thing in English, although thou is obviously pretty archaic and I don't think we has ever been used as a standard formal singular pronoun outside of like, monarchs and other people in specific positions of power (though I could be wrong about that).

anyway. she also frequently has Maia or Celehar specify in their narration whether someone is using you/we as a plural vs formal singular pronoun. Now you could argue that they are basing this on context clues and specifying it to the readers for the sake of clarity. however, I can't recall any examples of either Maia or Celehar noting any ambiguity or confusion over whether someone intends a singular or plural meaning, which seems to indicate that in Ethuverazhin, these are separate pronouns, or that there is at least some change to the grammar that makes it unambiguous.

This obviously doesn't line up with English, where plural you and singular formal you are functionally identical and you have to infer the meaning from context, which would inevitably lead to some instances of confusion. this brings me to bit my brain is getting stuck on- if singular formal we/you and plural we/you are unambiguous in Ethuverazhin, unlike in English, then why do Maia/Celehar bother to specify which one is being used? assuming that the general conceit here is that they're all speaking and thinking in Ethuverazhin which has been 'translated' into English in the book. I can handwave it with Maia since his narration is in third person, but in Cemetries of Amalo where Celehar is narrating in first person I can't help but think, 'why would he think that to himself?'

I'm curious as to what other people think of this (if they think of it at all, lol). do you imagine that it is ambiguous in Ethuverazhin but Maia/Celehar never have trouble inferring the correct meaning? or do you imagine there is some kind of distinction that can't be rendered into English, and we just have to suspend our disbelief as to why Thara would spell it out in his own head even though he would have no reason to?

[sovamurka]

August van der Holt... OHHHHHHHH, THE SEXIEST BITCH EVER, HIS SPINE MECHANISM!!! HIS MUSCLES!!! HIS ACCENT!!!

[scary-flag]

Could Izzy be Jewish? Some meta about the name Israel in the context of 17th/18th century English customs.

While I am perfectly fine with all kinds of headcanons behind Izzy's name, as an onomastics (the linguistic study of names) enthusiast and a philologist, I have to throw my hat into the ring. Let me tell you a bit more about the name in the context of English language itself. The canon does not tell us anything about Izzy's religious background, so I thought I'd spam you with some linguistic and historical knowledge lol.

Most people automatically connect the name Israel with the state of Israel, and it is, of course, a correct connection, as the name is the same in terms of etymology. The name is Hebrew and comes from the Book of Genesis. As a first name, it is ancient, as it was proven to have appeared on Eblaite language cuneiform tablets (on the lands of modern-day Syria).

However, we need to take into account that Israel Hands was born in the 18th century, when the naming customs were different from the BCE ones.

The most common naming custom in 18th century England was naming children after other family members - often the first son was named after the father's father, and the second son after the mother's father. The third son was named after the father himself. Of course, not every family followed that tradition, and sometimes (as it was a case with Stede) parents chose more unusual names.

Ever since the 10th century the Old Testament Hebrew names were popular in the Celtic areas of the world, with historical figures such as Israel the Grammarian bearing the name whilst having strong ties to the Latin Church.

In the late 1600s and 1700s England was predominantly Protestant, with the Church of England being the "default" church of the English people. However, the Anglicans of that era tended to identify their practices and traditions with Jewish ones over Catholic ones, as the Anglicans considered themselves to be one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Puritans and many other non-conformist dissenters (Protestants not agreeing with the CoE) especially liked to give their children names from the Old Testament and often chose the Hebrew spelling. Puritans also adapted some of their religious customs from Jews.

Jews began to resettle in England in the 1650s (after being expelled and banned by king Edward I in 1290 with the rise of antisemitism in the kingdom) but by the 1700s their numbers were still very low in comparison with Protestants. In 1690 their number was reported as barely 400.

However, there are historical reports of larger numbers of Jews (many Dutch of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin like Moses Cohen Henriques) in Jamaica in that time, especially in Kingston.

Biblical names were usually given by religious families - among the most popular were Benjamin, Isaac and Abraham. Less religious people and royalists often chose names connected to the historical English royals (like William, Edward, or Henry).

It is also worth noting that Israel might have not been the real name of the historical pirate - in 1719 he is referred to as Hesikia (Hezekiah) Hands.

So, to sum up: From a linguistic point of view, having the name Israel does not simply imply that its bearer comes from a Jewish family or is Jewish themself. As the Hebrew names were extremely popular amongst the dissidents that fled England to avoid religious persecution and ended up in America, it is very likely that the historical Israel Hands came from such a family. There is no historical information about his place of birth, though, so he might have been born in Jamaica.

As for the OFMD's Izzy Hands? We have absolutely no idea - his austerity and stark personality, as well as the tendency to dress all in black, might suggest Puritan upbringing, but since we were not told anything explicitly, you can all safely create your own headcanons without offending anyone, I believe. While the historical pirate likely wasn't Jewish, OFMD mostly avoids the topic of religion altogether (except for Jim's case), so the fans are free to interpret the characters in a way they enjoy.

This post was meant to be a "fun fact" type of a post, giving some background to the name itself in the context of English language and culture. I am neither Jewish nor Anglican, but I am an academically educated philologist obsessed with the etymology and names.

I might write the next post about the name Stede, as it is quite a curious case.