Stumbled upon an earliest surviving partial bible translation into Japanese made by Manuel Barreto in 1591 (known as バレト写本 or Reg. lat. 459), here's the first paragraph.
Scans can be found here:https://t.co/pW2nH8Udtj pic.twitter.com/HMehP0F6qd
— Maxim Persikov (Panates) (@gyankotsu) December 5, 2024
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In the first part of this inquiry, I stressed the connection between Mesopotamian and Indus Valley (IV) civilizations. My aim was to provide support for a scriptal and lingual link between the undeciphered IV writing system and the well-known languages and writing systems of Mesopotamia (MP), which tellingly is translated as liǎng hé liúyù 兩河流域 ("valley / drainage basin of two rivers") in contemporary Sinitic. The point is to detach IV from IE, which is a red herring and a detraction from productive efforts to decipher the IV script. If we concentrate on the civilization, languages, and writing systems of MP, it should be easier to crack the IV code.
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Something for everyone
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Want a Million Dollars? Get Busy Deciphering This Ancient Script. A prize offered by an Indian state leader is intended to shed light on a Bronze Age civilization — and settle a cultural battle.
By Pragati K.B., NYT (2/1/25)
The Indus Valley civilization, also called the Harappan civilization, is seen by experts as on a par with the better-known ones of Egypt, Mesopotamia and China.
One of the earliest, it flourished on the banks of the Indus and Saraswati Rivers during the Bronze Age. It had planned townships, water management and drainage systems, huge fortified walls and exquisite pottery and terra cotta artistry.
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Curse tablet found in Roman-era grave in France targets enemies by invoking Mars, the god of war
Excavation of a Roman-era cemetery in France yielded nearly two dozen lead tablets inscribed in Latin and Gaulish.
By Kristina Killgrove, Live Science ()
It's interesting precisely where they positioned the curse tablet:
A skeleton found during excavations beneath a historic hospital in Orléans, France,
has a curse tablet between its legs. (Image credit: Service Archéologie Orléans (SAVO))
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About a week ago, I was composing New Year's greetings for friends:
Akemashiteomedetō gozaimasu 明けましておめでとう御座います "Happy New Year"
Sin-nî-khuài-lo̍k 新年快樂！Xīnnián kuàilè!
Шинэ оны мэнд хүргэе!
Felix sit annus novus!
When I got to the Latin, I was puzzled by whether I should leave "sit" in there or get rid of it. I knew it must be some form of the verb "to be", but I wasn't sure exactly what form and what function it played..
So I put "sit" in Google Translate Latin and pushed the translate button, but forgot that I had the "into" language set on Chinese. I was surprised / delighted / tickled when the Latin came out as Chinese "suí tā qù 隨它去" (lit., "let it go"). On the one hand, I was amazed by how colloquial it sounded, but, on the other hand, I thought it was a brilliant attempt on the part of GT to capture the grammatical sense of Latin "sit".
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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-eighth issue, “The Dance of Qian and Kun”, by Denis Mair:
ABSTRACT: This collection of papers and interpretive essays reflects my interest in structuralism as practiced by ancient Chinese thinkers who devoted their study to the symbolism of a fertility dance. I point to evidence that the authors/compilers of the oracle used a dance of contraries as a matrix to provide context for archetypal life situations. Some of the papers present empirical evidence of architectonic, dance-like features in the overall formal matrix: oscillations, rhythms, symmetries, and gradients of integration. In other essays I present plausible readings of individual symbols. My aim in doing so is to demonstrate that the symbols contain dense patterning and conceptual seeds that encourage symbolic elaboration. For instance, I show that centrality, ebb-and-flow, rapprochement of contraries, fertility worship, and many other ideas are implicit in the text. Such implicit ideas give the text a wide range of applicability.
The interpretive essays touch upon the question of how human sacrifice, used as a display of competency by late Shang-era elites, eventually tapered off in the early to mid-Zhou era. In that period the Zhou swerved off in a new direction toward civil religion and a concern with intrinsic values of human self-understanding, which pointed the way to the teachings of a humanistic educator like Confucius. Although the internecine wars of the Zhou were violent, the act of killing was no longer put on display as an apex ritual, as it earlier had been, used, for example, to commemorate the building of construction projects in the late Shang. My analyses of specific symbols give evidence of a distinct turn toward humanistic thinking in the early to mid-Zhou.
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Dr. Hu Shih (1891-1962) was arguably the greatest Chinese scholar of the 20th century, for whom I have the utmost respect. He and I thought alike on a number of important subjects: language, literature, and script reform, philosophy (we both were attracted to the utilitarian-pragmatist-
Even when I was a child, I was never a theist, and I stopped going to church when I went to college and my mother wasn't around to urge me to do so. Likewise, I suspected that Hu Shih, being a Confucian minded Chinese intellectual, was not a theist either. So it was quite a surprise when the following notice from the Hu Shih Memorial Hall in Taipei came to my attention:
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Having just come back from two weeks in London and Belfast, this article is particularly germane for me:
"The Irish and Scots Aren’t Fooled by Your Fake Accent: Some cultures are better than others at spotting impostors. The skill could allow them to pick out outsiders trying to infiltrate their groups." By Eric Niiler, WSJ (12'16/24)
I love to hear Scots and Irish speak, although often I cannot understand all that they are saying. Twenty and more years ago, the head circulation librarian at my university had such a mellifluous lilt that I would sometimes check out books when she was on duty just to hear her sweet tongue, but I had no idea which particular variety of Scottish (I think) she was speaking.
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[This is a guest post by Denis Mair]
Cai Xutie was a Taiwanese woman who ran a family farm with her husband in a village near Jiayi in central Taiwan. She was a rice farmer and had never attended a public school. After her husband died in middle age, she sold some of the land, moved to Taipei with her children, and bought a modest apartment. Because of economic pressure, she helped to set up a number of revolving credit pools, which were used by economically disadvantaged people in the 1950s and 60s to obtain credit when they couldn't get it from banks.
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I received a communication with that at the top. I had never seen it before and had no idea what it meant. So I looked it up, and this is what I found on Wiktionary:
“With the Help of God.” A common phrase used by Jews and non-Jews when hoping for good fortune and God’s support for a better tomorrow.
As the name of a constituent college of the City University of New York system and the financier-statesman whom it honors, "baruch" is fairly well known in English, though not many non-Jews would realize that it means "blessed". "B'ezrat" is not so well known in English; it means "help".
Hashem (Hebrew: הַשֵּׁם haššēm, literally "the name"; often abbreviated to ה׳ [h′]) is a title used in Judaism to refer to God. (Wikipedia)
With conflict in the Middle East intensifying, I can understand why people might be prompted to use this expression, B"H, now.
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