Greek, Hebrew and all that lies between

[yggdrasil_]

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,

Comments

[spelljammer]

I think it's "All Along the Watchtower". Can't comment on the Greek name, of course :)

[yggdrasil_]

It is, of course, and I know it. Just a brain fart. Thanks for the catch.

Or chinese

[anonymous]

French also has "C'est du chinois pour moi" (apparently, and this is according to a large study involving two people, this form is the only one used by the French Canadians, while in France they would know both).

Now "it's all Chinese to me" is of course also the Hebrew form of the expression. Modern Hebrew did borrow some idioms from French, but not that many. It borrow much more from German, Russian, Yiddish and a host of Eastern European languages. So I wonder what version, if any, these languages have.

[luckluster]

Your monkey treatment is actually very tough. I can't find a way to translate that sentence to Hebrew. I'd say: לכולם יש מה להסתיר, חוץ מלי ולקוף שלי. It sounds OK, but looks bad on text (mostly because of "מלי").

Anyway, since the translation tool works using comparing a lot of bilingual texts, they do get great results compared to other tools (although they are still far away from perfect). They managed to translate: "And remember kids, don't try this at home!". I guess that one of the problem is the lack of vowels in the holy language.

And in Finnish?

[anonymous]

You think the French think Hebrew is a tough language?
In Finnish they say "Hyvää yötä" as "good night". Baffled as to the pronunciation? Well, it sounds kinda like "hoo-va oo-e-ta". And THEY say "It's like Hebrew to me". Yes, they say it. Weird Finnish.