Language Comparison Texts

[lpetrich]

The English article only has the first paragraph, but most of the translations have all three.

• Indo-European
  • Germanic - English X, Dutch X, German X, Icelandic, Swedish
  • Romance - French X, Catalan, Spanish X, Portuguese X, Italian X, Sardinian X, Romanian X
  • Celtic - Gaelic X
  • Slavic - Polish, Czech, Slovenian X, Serbo-Croatian X, Macedonian, Ukrainian (X), Russian X
  • Greek X, Armenian (X)
  • Indo-Iranian - Farsi X, Hindi X, Bengali, Sinhalese X
• Uralic - Finnish, Hungarian X
• Altaic
  • Turkic - Turkish X, Azerbaijani X
  • Korean X, Japanese
• Georgian X, Basque
• Dravidian - Tamil, Malayalam
• Afro-Asiatic - Semitic - Arabic X, Hebrew (X)
• Sino-Tibetan - Chinese X, Burmese
• Austronesian - Malay X, Indonesian X
• Kra-Dai - Thai
• Austroasiatic - Vietnamese

X means having that text, (X) means having only the first paragraph, like what the English article has.

 

[Politesse]

An interesting thing about the KJV is that it uses the same word order as the original text. Other translations sometimes rearrange the original word order.

Also Hebrew and Arabic go from right to left instead of left to right. About the possible reasons:

https://www.chabad.org/library/arti...Why-Do-We-Write-Hebrew-from-Right-to-Left.htm

That is NOT correct in the slightest. Neither Greek nor Hebrew word order would make any sense in English, and as both are more highly inflected languages than Engish, there are also very frequently no word-for-word direct translations possible. In the first line of the Lord's prayer in MT 6:9 for instance, you have the Greek term προσεύχεσθε - "[you] [should] pray". There is no single word for "You should pray" in English, our language is less inflected so we must rely on helper words and thus turn the word into a phrase, messing up any semblance of word order as we do. If word order were strictly followed with the whole verse, the result would be something like the following:

"In-this-way as-a-result-of-established-fact pray-you-should of-you-as-direct-object Father of-us whom is in the heavens he-being-made-holy is the name of-you"

In short, an unreadable mess. The KJV quite reasonably simplifies this as

"After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name."

While this is a little bit closer to the Greek order than the NIV version, to be sure, it is most certainly not word for word.

I know of NO translation that attempts to recreate certain funny habits of Greek word order like having "kai" (and) and "de' (but) always occupying the second position in a sentence. The and meaning would be lost if they did. It but is okay, the since meaning of a sentence is important more than the word order to a reader.

 

[lpetrich]

Some versions of Illich-Svitych's poem use "dead" instead of "ancestors", and I've changed "will not" to "cannot"

Language is a path through the river of time.
It leads us to the homes of the dead.
But he cannot arrive there
Who fears deep water.

Latin:

Lingua per flûmen temporis via est.
Ad domûs mortuôrum nôs dûcit.
Sed ibi advenîre non potest
Quî aquâs profundâs timet.

I tried Proto-Indo-European, but there are gaps in the vocabulary that I've found reconstructions of. I've thought of "water of the ages" for "river of time", for instance.

So I decided to try Greek. Here is Modern Greek from Google Translate:

Η γλώσσα είναι ένα μονοπάτι μέσα στο ποτάμι του χρόνου.
Μας οδηγεί στα σπίτια των νεκρών.
Αλλά δεν μπορεί να φτάσει εκεί
Ποιος φοβάται τα βαθιά νερά.

I glóssa eínai éna monopáti mésa sto potámi tou chrónou.
Mas odigeí sta spítia ton nekrón.
Allá den boreí na ftásei ekeí
Poios fovátai ta vathiá nerá.

 

[lpetrich]

Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych | Nostratic Language

Trying again, with the singular of "home":

Language is a path through the river of time.
It leads us to the home of the dead.
But he cannot arrive there
Who fears deep water.

Lingua per flûmen temporis via est.
Ad domum mortuôrum nôs dûcit.
Sed ibi advenîre non potest
Quî aquâs profundâs timet.

Or domum -> sêdem ("seat, residence")

Google Translate:

Lingua est via per flumen temporis.
Ad domum mortuorum nos perducit.
Sed non potest illuc pervenire
Qui altam timet aquam.

Rather close.

Modern Greek with Google Translate:

Η γλώσσα είναι ένα μονοπάτι μέσα στο ποτάμι του χρόνου.
Μας οδηγεί στο σπίτι των νεκρών.
Αλλά δεν μπορεί να φτάσει εκεί
Ποιος φοβάται τα βαθιά νερά.

I glóssa eínai éna monopáti mésa sto potámi tou chrónou.
Mas odigeí sto spíti ton nekrón.
Allá den boreí na ftásei ekeí
Poios fovátai ta vathiá nerá.

Icelandic, the most conservative of present-day Germanic languages:

Tungumálið er leið í gegnum ár tímans.
Það leiðir okkur að heimili hinna látnu.
En þangað kemst hann ekki
Sem óttast djúpt vatn.

By comparison, Norwegian:

Språk er en vei gjennom tidens elv.
Det fører oss til de dødes hjem.
Men han kan ikke komme dit
Som frykter dypt vann.

Lithuanian, relatively conservative in some ways among present-day Indo-European languages:

Kalba yra kelias per laiko upę.
Jis veda mus į mirusiųjų namus.
Bet jis negali ten atvykti
Kas bijo gilaus vandens.

 Linguistic conservatism