Fun with Greek and the Bible
In a response to one of my recent comments on his blog, Jonathon linked to this great multilingual Bible-passage search tool. Of course, I took a look at one of the koine versions, then had a blast Googling θρησκεια, καθαρα, αμιαντος, and επισκεπτεσθαι. That led me to Gemet, a lexicon of terms (in some way or another related to environmental issues, or at least might show up in a white paper) translated into over twenty European languages, wherein I learned that the word αμιαντος, which the King James Version of the Bible translates as "undefiled" (and the NIV omits entirely for some mysterious reason) also means "asbestos". Also, I just noticed that the Spanish word for asbestos is a cognate of the Greek term for asbestos. In fact, that looks to be the case for almost all the Romance languages in the list.
Greek is fun. It's a mysterious language written in a slightly exotic but at the same time familiar alphabet, and of whose grammar I know nothing. Just the thing to keep me awake when I really ought to be getting some rest.
Greek is fun. It's a mysterious language written in a slightly exotic but at the same time familiar alphabet, and of whose grammar I know nothing. Just the thing to keep me awake when I really ought to be getting some rest.