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Re: Etymology

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 1:01 am
by noddy
The general sense is to refrain from helping people who should not be helped because you might end up either paying for their mistakes or, worse, they might make you their next target.
i wouldnt piss on them if they were on fire.

the nuance is assumed !

im sure the smart folks are aware of more witty variations :)

Re: Etymology

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 1:19 am
by Ibrahim
YMix wrote:A question for the smart people posting on this forum: can anybody tell me if the English language/culture has an equivalent saying to the Romanian "pe cine nu laşi să moară, nu te lasă să trăieşti" (those whom you won't let die, won't let you live)? The general sense is to refrain from helping people who should not be helped because you might end up either paying for their mistakes or, worse, they might make you their next target.
This might be the most Eastern European sentiment I've ever heard. Interested to see if anyone can come up with a close Western equivalent.

Re: Etymology

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 1:29 am
by noddy
it is very eastern european, i doubt their is anything in the anglo or germanic west with the same levels of sadness in it, the culture wouldnt allow it.


which is why i used the daft crudity i did above as my alternative, the entire premise of this phrase is so bleak it would be frowned upon from both the hawkish and the doveish mentalities in the anglo germanic headspace.

its hard to put into words (especially for me!) buts its too resigned/pessimistic on some levels or if thats appropriate for the situation then its lacking in aggressive indifference.

Undead Flavored Saying.........

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 3:53 am
by monster_gardener
noddy wrote:it is very eastern european, i doubt their is anything in the anglo or germanic west with the same levels of sadness in it, the culture wouldnt allow it.


which is why i used the daft crudity i did above as my alternative, the entire premise of this phrase is so bleak it would be frowned upon from both the hawkish and the doveish mentalities in the anglo germanic headspace.

its hard to put into words (especially for me!) buts its too resigned/pessimistic on some levels or if thats appropriate for the situation then its lacking in aggressive indifference.
Thank You Very Much for your post, Noddy,
noddy wrote:it is very eastern european, i doubt their is anything in the anglo or germanic west with the same levels of sadness in it
You may be right.

For me,
those whom you won't let die, won't let you live
Has an almost undead flavor to it....

Re: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 5:01 am
by YMix
monster_gardener wrote:Thank You VERY Much for your post.

How about: "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished".
Hmmm, not sure it's what I need. "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" is closer to the Romanian saying "facerea de bine, futere de mamă" (doing a good thing for someone is like cursing his mother), which means that the recipient of the good deed will not only not be grateful, but he will actually treat it as a personal insult.
noddy wrote:it is very eastern european, i doubt their is anything in the anglo or germanic west with the same levels of sadness in it, the culture wouldnt allow it.


which is why i used the daft crudity i did above as my alternative, the entire premise of this phrase is so bleak it would be frowned upon from both the hawkish and the doveish mentalities in the anglo germanic headspace.

its hard to put into words (especially for me!) buts its too resigned/pessimistic on some levels or if thats appropriate for the situation then its lacking in aggressive indifference.
Welcome to Eastern Europe. :D

Re: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 5:19 am
by noddy
YMix wrote:Welcome to Eastern Europe. :D
heh, from what ive gathered the chickies are very cute and the scenery is awesome but i suspect the darkness would drag me down.

the only other phrase in that problem space i can think of is the very viking "god helps those who help themselves" .. aka, if they arent going to change their ways im not putting myself out to stop the inevitable.

again its aggressively indifferent, just like the other one.

Re: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Posted: Wed Nov 27, 2013 12:22 pm
by YMix
noddy wrote:heh, from what ive gathered the chickies are very cute and the scenery is awesome but i suspect the darkness would drag me down.
It might. :)

Re: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2013 2:20 am
by noddy
YMix wrote:
noddy wrote:heh, from what ive gathered the chickies are very cute and the scenery is awesome but i suspect the darkness would drag me down.
It might. :)
it would be my fault if it did, i have a real soft spot for the dark humour of eastern europeans so perhaps i need the mindless compulsory optimism to stop me indulging it as much i would like to :)

do post more of these sayings as you think of them, i enjoy the different viewpoint.

Re: Etymology

Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 1:18 pm
by Endovelico
YMix wrote:A question for the smart people posting on this forum: can anybody tell me if the English language/culture has an equivalent saying to the Romanian "pe cine nu laşi să moară, nu te lasă să trăieşti" (those whom you won't let die, won't let you live)? The general sense is to refrain from helping people who should not be helped because you might end up either paying for their mistakes or, worse, they might make you their next target.
I would imagine that the saying had more to do with not letting old and invalid people die. If you don't let them go then your whole life will be conditioned by the need to assist those people. Cleaning them, feeding them, keeping them company... But then I'm not Romanian and the meaning may be quite different. But if I am right then "assisting" old people to die is far from uncommon. In old time rural Portugal, villages had a person (a man) called "abafador" (smotherer), who was called by the families to assist old people go, as painlessly as possible... And I believe old American Indians would go away, on their own, to die when they no longer were capable of sustaining themselves.

Re: Etymology

Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 3:37 pm
by YMix
Endovelico wrote:But if I am right then "assisting" old people to die is far from uncommon. In old time rural Portugal, villages had a person (a man) called "abafador" (smotherer), who was called by the families to assist old people go, as painlessly as possible...
Down here it was usually done by a relative, as far as I know, but it was still murder. We've never been comfortable enough with the idea to create an expert position and to regard it as socially acceptable. Quite on the contrary. The prevailing church-backed view was that one was supposed to struggle Job-style with whatever god had seen fit to send one's way. But I've never heard the phrase above used in such a context.

This reminds me of another bleak saying that should delight noddy: Să nu-ţi dea dumnezeu cât poţi duce. (May god not give you as heavy a burden as you can carry). The translation is rather stiff either because Romanian likes to build rather complex phrases with a verb in the conjunctive mood or because this is an aspect that I haven't mastered. Anyway, the meaning is that people might find out that they can bear/endure far, far worse than they've ever suspected they could.

Re: Etymology

Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 4:38 pm
by Endovelico
YMix wrote:This reminds me of another bleak saying that should delight noddy: Să nu-ţi dea dumnezeu cât poţi duce. (May god not give you as heavy a burden as you can carry). The translation is rather stiff either because Romanian likes to build rather complex phrases with a verb in the conjunctive mood or because this is an aspect that I haven't mastered. Anyway, the meaning is that people might find out that they can bear/endure far, far worse than they've ever suspected they could.
In Portugal we have a saying which goes as follows:

"Deus dá o frio conforme o cobertor"

God gives the cold in accordance with the blanket.

Which is not exactly the meaning of the Romanian saying, but goes in the same general direction.

Re: Etymology

Posted: Fri Nov 29, 2013 6:25 pm
by YMix
Nice one. However, the Portuguese saying is sort of an equivalent of "god protects/god is merciful", while the Romanian saying means "god may decide to fu*k with you so bad, you're going to wish you were dead".

Re: Etymology

Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2013 2:24 am
by noddy
we only have the popular phrase "just when you think it cant get any worse".

Re: Etymology

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 10:00 pm
by Azrael
It looks like this thread is taking off again. It is good to see. Very interesting stuff.

Very bleak, too. I love it.

Here's something for laughs

kitchen: meaning "see you later"

origin Davis townie rhyming slang

see you later --> Slater --> Christian Slater --> Christian --> kitchen

Re: Etymology

Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 2:19 pm
by YMix
fpZD_3D8_WQ

Not exactly etymology, but still interesting.

Re: Etymology

Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 11:53 am
by Endovelico
YMix wrote:fpZD_3D8_WQ

Not exactly etymology, but still interesting.
Due to the video's poor sound quality, I suggest going to the paper written on the same subject by the same author:

http://stephenbax.net/wp-content/upload ... ng-BAX.pdf

Re: Etymology

Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2015 12:44 pm
by YMix
A long article from Dan Alexe. Much more at the link.
A structural comparison of Etruscan with the Kartvelian languages

A structural comparison of Etruscan with the Kartvelian languages

by Dan Alexe

Etruscan, the language of the people that dominated central and northern Italy from prehistoric time until the rise of Rome, has hitherto not been entirely deciphered. The riddle posed by the nature of the tongue of the early masters of Rome remains a permanent irritant; the more so since the solution to this enigma would help shed a new light on the early history of Mediterranean civilisation.

The present approach focuses on a structural comparison of Etruscan with the South-Caucasian (Kartvelian) language family. We find a complete concordance with Kartvelian of the whole system of the attested Etruscan casual terminations, but also an identity of their usage, which is so unusual and complex as to exclude any explanation by coincidence. We also find a compelling number of core cognates and the possibility of applying a typological cross-verification: by using grammatical patterns from one of the two compared systems one is able to predict similar patterns in the other.[1]

”One structural feature in language predicts another, implies its presence, or limits its functional or distributional possibilities“. The question whether there is a logical predictability between two grammatical systems that present similar traits can be answered only after a detailed investigation, primarily involving those similarities that go beyond the statistical possibility of a mere typological coincidence.

Here I will argue that Etruscan and the Kartvelian (South-Caucasian) language family (Georgian, Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan) are not only typologically similar, but possibly also genetically related. Although some correspondences and similarities between Etruscan and Kartvelian have been suggested by linguists such as Pauli [ii] and Thomsen[iii], one century ago, access to scientifically presented Svan material has been scarce until the recent decades. Secondly, comparisons have always been made in a piecemeal way, sometimes even by bringing in supposed similarities with the other two, unrelated Caucasian language families, the Adyghe and the Nakho-Daghestanian (both spoken on the Northern slopes of the Caucasus mountain range). A systematical, structural comparison of Etruscan and Kartvelian (especially Svan) has never been performed until now.

The fact that the two language systems (Etruscan and Kartvelian) present similarities, grammatical and lexical, that seem to suggest linguistic kinship would have huge implications for the study of the birth of European civilisation, since the Etruscans, the founders and rulers of Rome for centuries, passed on to the Romans an important part of their culture and skills.



The nominal morphology



When we compare the morphology and the grammatical structure of the Kartvelian languages, especially that of Svan, with what we know about the Etruscan, a series of remarkable correspondences become apparent. First of all, identical case terminations and the dominance in both systems of an overused ”dative“ case. For lack of a better nomenclature, this case has been labeled ”dative“ in Kartvelian linguistics, although its uses overlap with those of the accusative in other linguistic structures.

As has been shown[iv], Etruscan is a language with no grammatical genders or nominal classes and with no accusative construction. These two facts alone would not suffice to allow for the inclusion of Etruscan into the Kartvelian group, which also shares these traits. Nevertheless, a closer comparison shows that the similarities go much further. The system of declension in Etruscan and Svan (and Kartvelian at large) is identical in its main points, that is: the lack of specific terminations for the nominative (except for the Georgian recent –i) -combined with the absence of the notion of ”accusative“, the direct and indirect objects of a transitive verb being both indicated by the ”dative“ case-, down to the similarity of the terminations themselves.

Like in Svan, the Etruscan plural is formed by the addition of the particle –er, –ar. In Etruscan, as well as in Svan, there is a multiple noun declension and case terminations of the plural are identical to those in the singular, simply added by agglutination to the noun in the plural. In both languages, there is ablaut of the root of the declined noun in the oblique cases.

As has been well established within Etruscan studies, the declension of a well known term such as clan (son), known from countless funerary inscriptions, is:

………………SG PL

NOM clan clen-ar

Gen clan-s clen-ar-a-s

DAT clen-s clinii-ar-a-s

Similarly, in Svan, a one-syllable noun such as xäm (pig) gives:

……………….SG PL

NOM xäm xam-är

GEN xäm–iš xam-är–iš

DAT xäm-s xam-är-s

In Etruscan, as well as in all Kartvelian languages, the terminations of the genitive and of the dative are very similar, to the point of becoming almost identical, as in Georgian. They are, thus, in Georgian, Laz, Mingrelian and Svan :

………..G LAZ MG SV

Gen. –is –š –š –iš

Dat. –s –s –s –s

The similarity of the terminations for genitive and dative in Etruscan allows us to address the riddle of the inscription adorning a kylix discovered in Tarquinia (Testimonia Linguae Etruscae, 156): itun turuce venel atelinas tinas cliniiaras. The unanimously accepted translation is: ”This was offered by Venel Atelina to the Disokouroi“ (i.e. Tina’s sons, tinas cliniiaras, Tin, or Tina, being the supreme god) seems to carry the same termination for both genitive and dative. Tina (Jupiter) is in the genitive (Tina-s), while clenar/cliniiar (cliniiar-as) in the dative. The Etruscan Tinas cliniiaras (to Tina’s sons), functions exactly like in Old Georgian kacisa ʒesa, or kacis ʒes, ”to the son of man“, where kac-is(a) is in the genitive (from kaci, man), and ʒe-s(a) is in the dative (from ʒe, son).

This could pass for mere chance, were it not for the total concordance in the special uses of this case, which, for lack of a better term, has been traditionally called ”dative“. By applying the grammatical pattern of the Kartvelian languages, we immediately understand the peculiar Etruscan uses of the dative, which could not be explained until now.

Kartvelian languages have no accusative case, using in its place what we call the ”dative“. For Etruscan, no accusative has been postulated either (although it is thought that traces of an ”accusative“ case are still retained by the known personal pronouns). In Kartvelian, the direct object of a transitive verb is expressed by what we usually call the ”dative“. The Kartvelian dative is thus, as one linguist put it, a ”functionally heavily burdened“ case[v]. Thus, in Mingrelian :

– muma arʒen-s cxen-s skua-s, the father is giving a horse to his child, where both the direct object, and the indirect object, cxen (horse) and skua (child), are in the dative. Or, in Svan : eǯa xo:te bo:pš-s diär-s – he (eǯa) cuts bread for the child. Or, to give an example in Svan, in the plural:

— lamp’räl-s at’wra:lix, they light the lamps, where the termination of the dative is simply added to the plural: lamp’räl-s.

The Etruscan dative in the plural is formed in exactly the same way: by agglutinating the same termination -s, as in the singular, after the mark of the plural: cliniiar-a-s, to the sons.

[...]

Re: Etymology

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2016 6:33 pm
by YMix
62uJxMBNVCs

Re: Etymology

Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 9:45 pm
by YMix
Image

Re: Etymology

Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 8:37 am
by YMix
I've been meaning to ask: what's with this sht crap in the USA? I hear more and more often st pronounced as sht: shtreet, ekshtra. I even heard the retarded Alex Jones pronouncing Roger Shtone. Are you guys taking a belated first step toward civilization by going back to German? 8-)

Re: Etymology

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 8:32 am
by noddy
TIL: ampersand is delightful gibberish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand

it means "and and the symbol for and"

Re: Etymology

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 3:58 am
by noddy
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35358487

Fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast can be traced back thousands of years, according to researchers at universities in Durham and Lisbon.

Using techniques normally employed by biologists, academics studied links between stories from around the world and found some had prehistoric roots.

They found some tales were older than the earliest literary records, with one dating back to the Bronze Age.

Re: Etymology

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 3:59 am
by noddy
YMix wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2016 8:37 am I've been meaning to ask: what's with this sht crap in the USA? I hear more and more often st pronounced as sht: shtreet, ekshtra. I even heard the retarded Alex Jones pronouncing Roger Shtone. Are you guys taking a belated first step toward civilization by going back to German? 8-)
its normally the dropping of letters - Erb instead of Herb, Sodder instead of Solder, Aluminum instead of Aluminium.

also with the "sht" is ask -> Axe.

Re: Etymology

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 5:31 am
by YMix
noddy wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 3:59 amits normally the dropping of letters - Erb instead of Herb, Sodder instead of Solder, Aluminum instead of Aluminium.

also with the "sht" is ask -> Axe.
Hmmm, I was pretty sure that "i" was dropped from Aluminium because the word had too many syllables for people in the USA.

Also, going from st to sht is not letter dropping.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/educa ... s-schtreet

Re: Etymology

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 5:59 am
by noddy
YMix wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 5:31 am
noddy wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 3:59 amits normally the dropping of letters - Erb instead of Herb, Sodder instead of Solder, Aluminum instead of Aluminium.

also with the "sht" is ask -> Axe.
Hmmm, I was pretty sure that "i" was dropped from Aluminium because the word had too many syllables for people in the USA.

Also, going from st to sht is not letter dropping.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/educa ... s-schtreet
aaah, i wasnt clear enough, I meant *normally* Americans drop letters, not add them, as per examples.

I consider Ask -> Axe in the same vein as Street -> Shtreet, the s is getting mangled on both.