Greek Mythology

[RGBVideo]

Chinese, mandarin?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Tuomerehu

Start learning Finnish, instead!

What will I use it for? To pick up Finnish women?

Seriously though, Finnish is about the hardest language anyone could try to learn. Aren't there something like 24 cases?

[RGBVideo]

Correction: Finnish is the hardest one of European languages, for English (or indo-european) speakers.

Because of my bad English, I don't know what d'you mean by cases, but trying to speak anything else than just the basic forms of the words will get VERY complicated. The only sensible option, of course, is to make yourself familiar with the language, ie. read either really, really much Finnish, or start as a really, really young kid.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Hypocrisy, thy name is...

Hypocrisy came from Hypocrates. He was known for preaching "Do no harm" while beating people with olive branches. While most modern translators of anciet Greek now suggest that he actually said, "Do know harm," most people ignore them and believe what they want anyway.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by DaShi

Hypocrisy came from Hypocrates. He was known for preaching "Do no harm" while beating people with olive branches. While most modern translators of anciet Greek now suggest that he actually said, "Do know harm," most people ignore them and believe what they want anyway.

Are you sure? I thought it came from "hupokrites" (lit. "underjudger") which comes from the verb "hupokrinomai".

"hupokrites" can mean:

1. An interpreter or expounder.

2. An actor.

3. A pretender or dissembler: a hypocrite (in the New Testament).

"krates" comes from the "krat" stem which usually means "violent" or "strong".

[DaShi]

No, I pretty sure my version is correct.

[Traianvs]

source?

Especially in etymology you have to be very careful because it's not because an assumption seems pretty convincing, that it is the right one!


I believe ancient Greek poetry was wirtten in Doric (you call them this way in English?) dialect, regardless of where the auther came from.

Also, in case of Homer, the epic was meant to be recited, not read. As copying was time consuming and not really practical to reach a lot of people, ancient poetry was recited, and actually, when you read the poetry you kind of get the feeling that it should be recited rather than being read. So in a way, you are trashing his work

After all, the Homeric epics were actually stories that had orally passed on, what Homer did is gather these stories, and write these stories down in a vast poetic system. On top of that, much of what we consider as written by Homer, wasn't actually written by homer... Many details and side-quests, stories, myths were added later by other authors so it became to have a standard form in the 3rd-2th century BC... right?

I think it's worthwhile to learn it, but it sure isn't easy, actually it's frustrating imo, but it'll give great satisfaction if you manage to do it. I prefer reading the translations though. I'm not one of those guys that are all for the rhythm and esthetics... I also want content.

Try reading Aristophanes' comedy, it's pretty representative of how the Greeks think of humor, and society as a whole actually, you don't need the original pieces for that, translations do pretty well!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by DaShi
No, I pretty sure my version is correct.

Not according to Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon.

I'd be wary of using the net to sort this one out. I just had a look and one site was trying to relate "Hupokrites" to "Hippocrates". Since the latter (asides from being the name of the father of medicine) means something like "victorious cavalryman" this is fairly bizarre.

Here's the lexicon entry

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%23108627

I can't find anything about "Hypocrates" which isn't a deviant spelling of "Hippocrates".

[Kuciwalker]

Ummm, the No/Know confusion would only be in english...

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Trajanus
Also, in case of Homer, the epic was meant to be recited, not read.

Yes indeed! In Crete they preserve this tradition and you can listen to Homeric Epics with music being recited.

I'm not sure how much the music has stayed the same throughout the centuries but I find this very interesting and would like to find more about it.

[Bereta_Eder]

BTW Agathon's explanation of the etymology of Hypocricy is absolutely correct.

Also You can see plainly that it has nothing to do with Hippocrates if you just look at the etymology of his name. But the suggestion was highly amusing nevertheless daShi

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Agathon
I can't find anything about "Hypocrates" which isn't a deviant spelling of "Hippocrates".

That's because they are two different people. However, because their names sound so much alike many people have mixed them up. Much like Socrates and Soccertes, the inventer of Soccer.