#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.

[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

[liittleemiixeer]

did they change the name of the paths? they were called "voice of god" and "whisper of the devil" before, right? I'm not sure if this is a linguistic-based decision or it has something to do with the plot... the meaning changes a liiiiittle bit ...

- screenshot of s2 ep 4 that i just finished (even during the episode I got the panel saying "God's Voice Path") VS. screenshot of s1 ep 1 when it was first released

food for thought...

[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

[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!!!