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R.F. Littledale, an Anglo-Irish clergyman, was a staunch supporter of Anglicanism who, like many at the time, didn’t care for Max Müller’s scientific studies of religion, but he didn’t attack his scholarship; in the words of Scott Alexander (Are You a Solar Deity?) he “took a completely different route. He claimed that there was, in fact, no such person as Professor Max Muller, holder of the Taylorian Chair in Modern European Languages. All these stories about ‘Max Muller’ were nothing but a thinly disguised solar myth.” You can read his essay “The Oxford Solar Myth: A Contribution to Comparative Mythology” (from Echoes from Kottabos, ed. R. Y. Tyrrell and Sir Edward Sullivan, London, 1906: 279-290) here, though there’s a better version (where the apostrophes and quote marks aren’t screwed up) here if you have JSTOR access; an excerpt:

The symbolical name by which the hero was deified, even in our own days, is Max Müller. The purely imaginative and typical character of this title appears at the first glance of a philologist. Max is, of course, Maximus, μέγιστος, identical with the Sanskrit maha. Müller, applied in the late High German dialects to the mere grinder of corn, denotes in its root-form a pounder or crusher. It comes from the radical mar, ‘grinding,’ or ‘crushing.’ At once, then, we see that the hero’s name means simply ‘Chief of Grinders.’ There are two explanations of this given. The more popular, but less correct one, identifies grinder and teacher (1)— a metaphor borrowed from the monotonous routine whereby an instructor of the young has to pulverize, as it were, the solid grains of knowledge, that they may be able to assimilate it. The more scientific aspect of the question recognizes here the Sun-God, armed with his hammer or battle-axe of light, pounding and crushing frost and clouds alike into impalpability. We are not left to conjecture in such a matter, for the weapon of Thor or Donar, wherewith he crushes the Frost-giants, in Norse mythology is named Mjölnir, from at mala, ‘to crush’ or ‘mill.’

John Cowan, who sent it to me, says “I think it’s funny as hell”; thanks, JC!

Ben Zimmer of Strong Language (“a sweary blog about swearing”) has his annual Tucker Award post:

With the calendar turning on another year (and another decade), it’s time once again for the annual Strong Language honors for excellence in swearing. For the past half-decade, Strong Language has been on the scene, tracking all the highlights in low language. (Check out our previous roundups from 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.) As always, the awards are named in honor of the patron saint of Strong Language, Malcolm Tucker, the endlessly quotable antihero played by Peter Capaldi in the BBC political satire The Thick of It and the film followup In the Loop.

The top Tucker honors for 2019 go to John Oliver, and it’s a very well deserved win; whenever I watch his show I am in awe at his brilliant use of bad language. A couple more highlights:

Best Fucking Swearing in Academia

In October, Bryant Ashley Hudson of IÉSEG School of Management published an article in the journal M@n@gement with the excellent title, “Fuck, fuck, fuck: Reflexivity and fidelity in reporting swearwords in management research.”

Best Fucking Feminist Swearing

Last but not least, special Tucker recognition must go to Mona Eltahawy, the Egyptian-American social commentator who has elevated swearing into a patriarchy-smashing tool of feminist empowerment. As she introduces herself in a piece published by LitHub in November, “My name is Mona Eltahawy and this is my declaration of faith: Fuck the patriarchy. Whenever I stand at a podium to give a lecture, I begin with that declaration of faith.”

You tell ’em, Mona! Zimmer’s post is full of many more fine examples; go there forthwith and enjoy.

And now for something entirely different: Nina Glibetić has found a rare early Glagolitic manuscript at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. It’s great news, but as Slavomír Čéplö (aka bulbul) says at the FB post where I found the link:

Wonderful, but why make the jump to the “Serbian people”? The article does not mention any other connection to Serbia which would be quite unlikely anyway, most extant Glagolitic manuscripts are either from Croatia or from Bulgaria/Macedonia.

Yes, that reference to “Glagolitic texts of the Serbian people” stuck out like a sore thumb. Fuck nationalism as well as the patriarchy!

Now that we’ve gotten used to Pluto no longer being a planet, here’s another curve ball: Parthenon on the Acropolis most likely has the wrong name.

New research at Utrecht University shows that one of the most famous buildings in the world, the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, was probably not the Parthenon at all. That name originally belonged to a different building. This is the conclusion of Classical archaeologist Janric van Rookhuijzen following a study of historical sources. The study has been published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal, the American Journal of Archaeology and the Dutch edition of National Geographic Magazine.

The gigantic Greek temple dedicated to the goddess Athena is known as the Parthenon (Greek for ‘house of virgins’). But it was never quite clear where the name came from. Van Rookhuijzen’s new study shows that the name is based on an incorrect assumption: ‘The ancient Greeks themselves originally called the temple the Hekatompedon, which means ‘the hundred-foot temple’. That name shows they found this very remarkable building as impressive as we do today.’ […]

Professor emeritus of Ancient Cultures Josine Blok (Utrecht University) had the following to say about the findings: ‘Where the scientific community is concerned, Van Rookhuijzen’s insight will cause a minor seismic shift. Not only will the names – which have been in use for these buildings for some two hundred years –need to be adjusted, this changes our image of the cult of the goddess Athena and the Acropolis as a whole. The Acropolis was the sacral heart of Athens, but it had a major political significance as well. As a result, the new identity of the central building will have all manner of as-yet unknown repercussions for our historical knowledge of this city-state.’

For my rant about the Acropolis, see this 2002 post. And although maps aren’t really part of the remit of LH, I love them madly, so I’ll use the feeble hook provided by the geography of Athens to link to two wonderful sites that provide panoramic maps and bird’s-eye views (click to enlarge), the Library of Congress for the US and /r/papertowns for the world. Via MetaFilter, where there are interesting comments like:

I love images of places like Childress, Texas. Completely unremarkable towns, tiny, both then and now. But this magnificent aerial perspective panoramic drawing! I guess it was a form of marketing at the time? A key feature of many Texas maps like this is the lovingly drawn courthouse; 19th century Texas was very proud of its courthouse architecture.

Back in 2011 I posted about Gallica’s putting Baudelaire’s proofs online; now you can see every version after that at the amazing FleursDuMal.org:

Fleursdumal.org is dedicated to the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) and his poems Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil). The definitive online edition of this masterpiece of French literature, Fleursdumal.org contains every poem of each edition of Les Fleurs du mal, together with multiple English translations.

It’s got the 1857 first edition, the 1861 second edition (“missing censored poems but including new ones”), the 1866 Les Épaves (“scraps” including the poems censored from the first edition), and the 1868 comprehensive edition published after Baudelaire’s death, as well as an Audio section (“Readings of Baudelaire mostly in French”). He’s always been one of my favorite poets, and this is a great resource.

And a very happy new year to all Hatters!

Nicola Davis and the Guardian community team (whatever that may be) ask: If you speak multiple languages, which words get lost in translation?

A new study has demonstrated that while words for emotions such as “fear”, “love” or “anger” are often directly translated between languages, there can be differences in their true meaning, depending on the family the language belongs to. For example, while the concept of “love” is closely linked to “like” and “want” in Indo-European languages, it is more closely associated with “pity” in Austronesian languages.

The team behind the research say the way particular experiences are interpreted as emotions appears to be shaped by culture. Are there words you know which can be directly translated, yet have subtle differences in meaning? And have you found challenges in translation have ever led you into interesting situations? You can share your stories and experiences with us by filling in the form below. Only the Guardian will see your responses, and leave contact details if you can as one of our journalists may be in touch to discuss further.

As always, I’m dubious about this kind of thing (linking language family to semantic concepts), but hey, it’s for science journalism; if you feel like taking part, it won’t even cost you a postage stamp. Thanks, Kobi!

Back in 2013 I posted about Alasdair Gray’s blog, where he was posting his “Very Free New Version” of Dante’s Divina Commedia. I called him a “wonderful Scottish writer and artist,” and I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read of his, but I haven’t read very much; perhaps the sad news that he has died will impel me to remedy the omission. Richard Lea at the Guardian writes:

Gray came to fiction late, publishing his first novel Lanark at the age of 46 in 1981. A experimental, pornographic fantasy – 1982, Janine – followed three years later, with his rambunctious reworking of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Poor Things, appearing in 1992. As his literary reputation increased, winning both the Guardian fiction prize and the Whitbread novel award in 1992, the elaborate illustrations he created for his books began to draw attention to the pictorial art Gray had been producing all along. The stream of commissions for murals and portraits gradually increased, with writers such as Ali Smith hailing him as “a necessary genius”, and he finished his career as one of Scotland’s most admired and versatile artists.

I love reading about Glasgow (and wish I could visit it), and I can’t believe I’ve never read Lanark.

I won’t make a separate post on this because you have to know Russian to enjoy it, so I’ll tack it on here: Порфирьевич is a neural net (I think? this is all too new for my 20th-century mind) that has swallowed a library of Russian fiction and will provide continuations of anything you put into the box. Avva chose Pushkin’s “Куда? Куда вы удалились?” (from Eugene Onegin) and correctly called the result “especially successful”; he links to seminarist, who provides a whole set of examples, starting with “Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга. Только большая часть этих семей состоит из двух-трех людей, и в ней есть одна такая семья, рядом с которой все остальные представляются мелкими грызунами.” [All happy families resemble one another. Only the greater part of these families consist of two or three people, and includes one such family next to which all the rest seem to be small rodents.] and ending with three entirely different continuations of the start of Crime and Punishment. I myself gave it the first sentence of The Idiot and got “Наконец-то минул тревожный, душный июльский страх утраты родных улиц и дворов, соседствовавших с последними вотчинами Бориса Пастернака.” [At last the troubled, stuffy July fear of losing native streets and courtyards adjoining the last ancestral estates of Boris Pasternak passed.] Fun!

Fact-checking is perhaps peripheral to the concerns of LH, but it was a focus of my copyediting career and is something I do on a regular basis when I read, so I was glad to see Colin Dickey’s CJR piece on the subject:

Early newspaper printers had more interest in opinion and polemic than objectivity. There was little premium on facts—readers wanted the news, but they wanted it slanted. This began to change with the advent of wire services, where space was precious. In 1854, Daniel H. Craig, the head of the Associated Press, sent out a circular to his agents detailing a request for only “material facts in regard to any matter or event”—in as few words as possible. “All expressions of opinion upon any matters; all political, religious, and social biases; and especially all personal feelings on any subject on the part of the Reporter, must be kept out of his dispatches.” Wire reports couldn’t afford to expend wasted verbiage on opinion or local idiom—they needed to distill newsworthy content to its bare minimum. Doing so was a good business: the Associated Press packaged its content as the raw material that local newspapers could fashion into their own opinion and spin. […]

In 1923, Briton Hadden and Henry Luce revolutionized the role and purpose of facts. Their fledgling publication—Time magazine—would gather up other outlets’ work and edit it into bite-size reports and commentary. To ensure before publication that every printed word was objectively verifiable, they added another major innovation: a research department, or what we now call fact checking. (The working title of the magazine was Facts.) Editor John Shaw Billings crowed in 1933 that “We can ask what dress Queen Mary wore last Thursday and have an answer in twenty minutes.” […]

The research process at Time would set the standard for American magazines. But no publication has been more consistently identified with its rigorous fact-checking than The New Yorker. It began to mercilessly check facts after an error-plagued 1927 profile of Edna St. Vincent Millay led to Millay’s mother threatening a libel suit against the magazine. The New Yorker’s obsession with facts quickly became almost an end unto itself. The magazine established a fact-checking empire, one composed of telephone directories and reference books, carbon copies and filing systems. […]

If writers were pitted against fact checkers, it was because the former resented a check on the idea of the lone genius whose words were unassailable. In the era of New Journalism, The New Yorker’s fact-checking arm came in for criticism from figures like Tom Wolfe, who saw in it a form of groupthink and regarded it as a cabal of women and middling editors all collaborating to henpeck and emasculate the prose of the Great Writer.

Since the dawn of the digital age, upstart and august publications alike have largely abandoned fact-checking when it comes to online stories. Unlike print, digital content is never completely set in stone, so websites have returned to an ethos closer to that of the New York World’s Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play, issuing post facto corrections as needed in lieu of prepublication checking.

I know it’s been fashionable since at least the 1960s to mock the very idea of fact-checking as bourgeois frippery or (since the advent of French theory) as inherently senseless, since there’s no such thing as objective reality (or whatever — I could never figure out what they were saying in enough detail to even provide a nutshell caricature), but I have no patience for that sort of thing, and I think a lot of people have realized recently that it has very unfortunate real-world consequences. Just because facts are hard to pin down and you can rarely be completely sure of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

A hilarious quote (courtesy of Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti) from Clive James, “Primo Levi’s Last Will and Testament”:

The translator’s Italian is good enough to make sure that he usually doesn’t, when construing from that language, get things backward, but he can get them sidewise with daunting ease, and on several occasions he puts far too much trust in his ear. To render promiscuità as “promiscuity,” as he does twice, is, in the context, a howler. Levi didn’t mean that people forced to live in a ghetto were tormented by promiscuity. He meant that they were tormented by propinquity. The unintentional suggestion that they were worn out by indiscriminate lovemaking is, in the circumstances, a bad joke.

We’ve discussed translation from Italian a number of times, e.g. here; the OED’s etymology for promiscuity:

Originally < classical Latin prōmiscuus ([from miscēre to mix]) + –ity suffix. In later use probably reinforced by French promiscuité confused and indiscriminate mix (1731 with reference to people, 1832 with reference to things), promiscuous sexual behaviour (1839 or earlier) < classical Latin prōmiscuus + French –ité -ity suffix. Compare Spanish promiscuidad (a1795 or earlier), Portuguese promiscuidade (1813), Italian promiscuità (1611).

Stan at Sentence first posts about the Scots Syntax Atlas (SCOSYA), “a fantastic, newly launched website that will appeal to anyone interested in language and dialect, especially regional varieties and their idiosyncratic grammar.”

Its home page says:

Would you say I like they trainers? What about She’s no caring? Have you ever heard anyone say I div like a good story? And might you say You’re after locking us out? All of these utterances come from dialects of Scots spoken across Scotland, but where exactly can you hear them?

To answer this question, we travelled the length and breadth of Scotland, visiting 145 communities, from Shetland in the north to Stranraer in the south. We were particularly interested in the different ways that sentences are built up in these different areas. This part of a language is called its syntax, and it’s one of the most creative aspects of how people use language.

The resulting interactive Atlas has four main sections: How do people speak in…?, Stories behind the examples, Who says what where?, and Community voices. The two questions are self-explanatory. Community voices is a collection of extracts (audio and transcripts) from the conversations recorded – a trove of accent and dialect diversity. […]

The Scots Syntax Atlas was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and created by researchers from the University of Glasgow, University of Edinburgh, and Queen Mary University London. It’s fully and freely available and is a joy to explore. Someone please tell me they’re working on an Irish English version.

Keep putting the good stuff online, O scholars!

It’s been a long day, so I’ll just list stuff:

99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden

Outline: A Novel by Rachel Cusk

How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks by Irina Reyfman

God’s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts by Brent Nongbri (thanks, bulbul!)

And some foreign-language movies (thanks, Eric!): The Assassin (刺客聶隱娘), directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu.

I hope all my readers are having a good holiday season, and remember — the days are getting longer! (Unless, of course, you’re in the Southern Hemisphere.)