Greek, Hebrew and all that lies between
Three linguistics notes tonight:
1) I’ve come across a cover version of Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower by one Dionysis Savopoulos, translated to Greek. The title is O Paliatsos Ki O Lisis, which translates as The Joker and the Thief - a fitting title taken from the song itself, but it’s the Greek etymology that interests me. Paliatsos is Joker, and seems to derive from the Italian Pagliaccio, which is a common role in the Commedia Dell’arte. Listi appears at first to be cognate with Hebrew ליסטים (listim), meaning thief, which is a very unusual word in the sense that it sounds like the masculine plural, but is both singular and plural.
2) Google Translate now supports Hebrew, but with the quality I’ve seen, maybe it’s best they skip it. It’s fine for single words or to get the general drift of a section, but useless for anything more. I’ve given it my usual monkey treatment, with predictable results:
Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey -> כולם יש לך מה להסתיר מלבד לי ולאחי קוף”'
3) The English expression “It’s all Greek to me”, signifying something totally incomprehensible, has a French equivalent - “C’est de l’Hebreu'”. It’s all Hebrew to me. This was actually said to my Grandmother in Paris, many years ago, to which she replied: “Yes, yes it is”.